


i'm not the same kid from your memory

by BirchBow (chaoticTenebrism), roachpatrol



Category: Motorcity
Genre: Aftermath, Amnesia, Captivity, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Implied/Referenced Torture, Imprisonment, M/M, Mindfuck, Non-Consensual Bondage, Non-Consensual Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-08-30 06:32:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 40,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8522236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticTenebrism/pseuds/BirchBow, https://archiveofourown.org/users/roachpatrol/pseuds/roachpatrol
Summary: Chuck belongs in Deluxe. He has always belonged in Deluxe. He's never met the Burners before in his life. He's definitely not the infamous traitor Mike Chilton's dead boyfriend. And he's going to make it back home if it kills him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Where's your gavel? Your jury?_   
>  _What's my offense this time?_   
>  _You're not a judge but if you're gonna judge me_   
>  _Well, sentence me to another life_
> 
> —Paramore, _Ignorance_

 

“Hey, guys, I found your boy,” Claire says. “Get here like, _yesterday_ , alright?”

Chuck looks different, when they get there—not yesterday, but pretty darn fast. Mike expected him to look different—it’s been two months—but he was thinking more like, beaten, starved, gaunt and terrified in a little white cell, curled up small with terror. Mike was going to break down a door and pull Chuck into his arms and— and— _rescue_ him.

Instead, they find Chuck standing tall, healthy, and smiling up in one of the top floors of the Executive Tower, where Claire had just gotten some kind of data entry job and, apparently, come face to face with the Burner they’ve been going completely nuts trying to find. He’s got a foam tray of KaneCo Stimulus Beverages in one hand, a Stimulus Beverage Infusion Unit tucked under his other arm, and is having by all appearances a perfectly cheerful conversation with Claire, who’s pulled out all the stops to keep him occupied by putting her hand on his elbow.

Claire’s eyes go wide when she sees Mike and Dutch approach, and she makes some kind of complicated facial expression that Mike doesn’t know her well enough to read. She’s still distracting Chuck, for some reason, and pulls his arm against her chest to keep him from turning and looking at them. She makes an even more emphatic facial expression at Mike, this time with grimacing.

“...Chuck?” Mike asks, hesitantly, and Claire drops her face into her free palm.

Chuck glances back over his shoulder, and the smile drops straight off his face when he sees Mike and Dutch. Chuck’s eyes go really wide. Mike can see this because someone at some point gave him a haircut.

“Oh, man, what,” says Dutch.

He screams— _that’s_ familiar, at least— and throws the Stimulant Beverages at them. Mike dodges, but hot blue liquid spatters Dutch and coats the white floor. Chuck spins on his heel, grabs Claire, and takes off running, still screaming. Claire screams too, in outrage, but Chuck’s screaming for help.

“Chuck,” says Mike, completely lost now.

“Well, this is going great,” Dutch says, wiping his face. “C’mon, they must have messed with his head, Claire was trying to tell us! We gotta stop him before he gets Security!”

“Right. Right! Yeah, after him!” Mike activates his staff and races down the corridor. Chuck’s shoved himself against an elevator at the far end, and he jams the call button frantically. It opens just as they reach him, and he makes the mistake of darting inside. Dutch and Mike jump in, too, and grab at him. Claire screams again, struggling to get out of the way.

“Sorry!” Mike yells, dodging a lethal high heel.

“I hate all of you!” Claire yells.

Chuck pushes Claire into the corner of the elevator and puts himself in front of her, nearly crying with terror, then knees Dutch in the gut, breaks the Infusion Unit against the wall of the elevator, and tries to glass Mike in the throat. It’s so startling that he actually gets in a glancing cut across Mike’s jaw, and he yelps. Dutch grabs Chuck’s upper arms, squeezing him tightly, and has to duck his head down against Chuck’s shoulder to keep from getting his nose broken as Chuck rams him hard against the elevator’s wall.

Mike hits _first floor_ on the elevator, and gets kicked in the shin. He has to grab for Chuck’s legs and gets kicked in the chest for it.

“Did we bring any, uh—any rope?” he gasps.

“Where do you think I’d keep rope!” Claire screams.

“Not you! Dutch!”

“Man! No!” Dutch snaps. “This was supposed to be a rescue mission, not a kidnapping!”

Chuck’s screams get a lot more frantic. Mike gets kicked in the gut.

“Man, if he fought like this _before_ —” Dutch wheezes. The elevator dings.

Everyone but Claire piles out, dripping blood and Stimulus Beverage.  Chuck twists like an enormous feral cat, makes about the same noise, and nearly tears free. There’s Kane Co. employees wandering around the lobby, and several guards. Mike and Dutch snuck in through the cleanbot vents, instead of trying to pass themselves off as Deluxe citizens, and so they’re wearing their regular Motorcity clothes plus a layer of dust, ash, stimulant beverage, and blood. Everyone stares.

“ _IT’S THE BURNERS,”_ Chuck screams. “ _HELP US!”_

A lot of laser guns get drawn. Chuck bites Dutch on his bare arm.

“Man!” says Dutch. “Forget this!”

He draws his omnitool and electrocutes Chuck in the head.

“Dutch!” Mike protests.

“He was crazy!” Dutch yells, and slings a moaning, twitching Chuck over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.  “Come on, let’s beat it!”

They make it outside, Dutch leading, Mike holding the rear, and then Stronghorn roars up between them and the pursuing guardsmen. They pile in the passenger side and slam the door. It’s a tight fit: Dutch was supposed to hitch a ride with Julie, but she’s been held up on the other side of town.

“ _What happened?”_ Julie demands over the comms. “ _Are you guys okay?”_

“ _Texas saved the day, Janice!”_ Texas crows. “I totally did, didn’t I? You ladies were toast.”

Dutch makes an offended noise, but Mike cuts him off with, “Yeah, Texas, good job. Julie, tell Claire we owe her one. A big one.”

Stronghorn goes screaming off, Texas ramming security vehicles gleefully out of the way the whole trip back to the Motorcity access pipe.

Mike holds Chuck tightly to his chest the whole way, just in case he wakes up and tries to kick Texas or something.

 

*

 

He doesn’t really come to until they’re back in the hideout, and he’s laid out across the folding cot in the recovery room in a mess of long, randomly twitching limbs.  He looks so wrong in Kane Co. colors, even whole and healthy, he looks... erased.

“Where... what happened?” he moans.

“Hey, buddy, how’re you feeling?” Mike asks, trying to be gentle and soothing and not overjoyed. He helps Chuck sit up.

“Am I... what...who’re... ?” Chuck mumbles, looking around like his eyes aren’t focusing. “Th... th’girl...”

“Claire’s fine. She’s safe.”

“Nnh. Where... ‘m I?”

“You’re safe too, now. You’re back in Motorcity.”

“Oh!” says Chuck.  Then he sits up, grabs the nearest tray of scavenged medical supplies and bashes it over Mike’s head. It’s mostly aluminum and plastic, so it doesn’t really hurt, but it startles him into grabbing for Chuck’s bony wrists, and then Chuck thrashes off his cot, kicks it over, knees Mike in the gut, and bites his ear.

“Ow! Chuck, cut it out!”

Chuck does not cut it out. Chuck fights like an insane, desperate whirlwind of elbows and teeth, screaming at the top of his lungs. Jacob rushes into the room and Chuck manages to get an arm free of Mike’s joint lock in order to throw an old bone saw clear across the room and clock Jacob in the face, luckily with the handle. Jacob curses, dives to the side, ducks several more thrown tools and the cot’s pillow before he can grab up a tray and start using it as a shield.

“Well at least we know the part of his brain that _aims_ still works,” he grouses, circling around them.

Mike gets Chuck in a _better_ joint lock, one that works on best friends who are apparently double jointed or something, and jerks his head to the disparate jumble of bottles that might generously be called a medicine cabinet.  “Do we have any, I don’t know, any sedative?”

“Third shelf,” Jacob says. “Won’t knock you out, but it’ll slow you down.”

“Sure, great, anything, let’s go!” Mike growls. Chuck bucks viciously underneath him, and Mike thinks he’s going to start tearing muscle if he keeps going like this. It’s not the same red-eyed reckless, fearless mania as the booster, Chuck’s clearly scared out of his mind, but the effect is the nearly the same. Chuck’s not much fun to fight.

Jacob goes and rummages through the shelf before finding a little bottle and a syringe.

“Hold him,” he warns, and approaches cautiously.

Chuck sees Jacob coming with the needle, and his screaming turns into terrified sobbing. He makes a final, horrible effort to throw Mike off of him, his shoulders straining against themselves, before Jacob pins his head down and sinks the needle into the throbbing vein exposed along his neck.

Chuck winds down gradually as the drug takes hold, his wild cries trailing off into a weak, ugly, hopeless whimpering. When Mike cautiously lets him out of the joint lock, Chuck rolls blearily over onto his front and tries to crawl towards the door.

Feeling sick, Mike grabs the back of his pale Deluxe shirt, and Chuck stops being able to make any more forward progress. His big hands squeak as he paws at the old linoleum.

“This is bad,” Mike says to Jacob. “This is... really bad. What _happened_ to him? What did they _do?”_

“I don’t know, kid. He was up there for awhile. Could have been anything. He didn’t recognize you, did he?”

“He called us Burners,” Mike says. “But he didn’t really  _know_ us. I don’t think he really remembers he’s one of us right now.”

“Hmmn, well. Look how short his hair is, back here...” Jacob runs his fingers through the short fuzz of Chuck’s new haircut, and pauses at the base of his skull. “Yeah, there’s some fresh scarring, looks like.”

“They cut up his _brain!?_ ”

“No. Isn’t big enough for that. Plugged something into the base of his skull, maybe. Could have been a shunt, a wire... seems like they must have tried to scramble him up, induce amnesia, something like that. No saying how much damage they did yet, kid. Sorry.”

“Oh, man. Oh, _Chuck_.”  

Jacob heaves the cot back upright, and Mike drags his feebly-struggling best friend back onto it. Jacob rummages around the mess until he finds some spare seatbelts, and comes back to cinch them tightly around Chuck’s wrists and legs.  Chuck wheezes with fear as Mike helps, and it makes him feel like a traitor—especially when his eyes keep catching on red impact marks that are already darkening into bruises across Chuck’s skin.

He’s got so many more freckles, now. The fancy full-spectrum lighting and freely available sunlight up in Deluxe has scattered intricate constellations of dark spots all around the old white burn scars on his arms. They’re spread densely across his cheeks, scattered down his throat, even peppered across the stretch of his stomach where his struggling has rucked up his stupid colorless Deluxe shirt.

“Please,” Chuck moans, and Mike’s attention snaps back to his face. His eyes are wide and wet with tears. “Please, lemme... lemme go. Lemme out. Please, I... I don’t...” he blinks, tries to focus. “‘M’not anyone. Not... I don’t, I’m no one, lemme go.”

“You’re Chuck,” Mike says helplessly. “You’re my friend, you’re one of us.”

“Nnn.” Chuck shakes his head, his eyes narrowing into a glare. “You’re. You’re him, you’re that... Chilton, that... guy.”

“Yeah, I’m— yeah, buddy, I’m Mike. I’m your friend.”

“Burner _scum,_ ” Chuck snaps, with such intense hatred that Mike recoils. “Lemme _go!”_

“Okay, okay,” Jacob says.  There’s a rising lump on his forehead, but he looks determined.  “Everybody calm down!”  

Chuck rolls onto his side, eyes wide, bound hands pulled up to his chest.  Jacob lowers his voice again, as gentle as his hoarse voice can be.  

“Okay, kid,” he says.  “Tell us what you remember.”

“What I…?”  Chuck sniffs hard, obviously still struggling to focus.  “I don’t know anything.”

“Whatever you remember is cool,” Mike says earnestly, and then winces as Chuck shoots him another venomous glare.  “Dude, just talk to us.  We need to know—”

“I don’t care!”  Chuck’s voice cracks.  “I don’t care what you need to know, I—I don’t know anything, and even if you torture me I don’t have anything I can tell you, and, and—”

Mike can’t help himself. He reaches out again, but Chuck just flinches back, lip curling, hands trembling.

“Sorry!" he says. "Dude, we’re not gonna _torture_ you!  We’re not like that, we don’t hurt people.”

“ _Yeah right,_ ” Chuck mumbles, and glances pointedly down at the bruises their hasty rescue/kidnapping left on his skin.  Mike opens his mouth to argue, but he can’t find any words.  _We had to_ and _It was for your own good_ and _You’ll thank us when you’re better_ all sound fake, even inside his own head.

Jacob lays a hand on Mike's arm and leans back, kneading his knuckles into one temple like the pressure can ease the headache that’s pounding persistently behind his eyes.

“Look, kid,” says Jacob to Chuck.  “We ain’t gonna ask you about any Deluxe secrets.  We just want to know about _you_.  If you’re as ‘nobody’ as you figure you are, no harm in that.  Right?”

Chuck’s eyes flicker from Jacob to Mike.  “...I’m not talking to _Chilton_ ,” he says, almost testing, like he’s seeing how far he can push.  Jacob glances apologetically at Mike, who fists his hands at his sides in helpless frustration.

“Dude, just—” for a second he has to stop, because Chuck is just _watching_ him, hateful and terrified and wrong.  “—just stop calling me that, okay?”

“What _should_ I call you?”  Chuck manages to pack a lethal amount of contempt into the words.  “ _Mikey_?”

The tone is completely wrong, but the sound of the nickname still pulls Mike upright, eyes widening.  “I—yeah!  You used to—”

“I didn’t _used_ to _anything_ _with_   _you_ ,” Chuck cuts over him, still in that heavy, biting tone of voice.  “I do basic fetch jobs for the Kane Co Executive Tower and I don’t know who you think I am but I’m _not!_  I’m telling you, I’m _nobody_.  Especially not this... other guy you think I look like, or whatever.  Whoever that poor sucker was.”

“Chuck,” says Mike. “He was— you’re— do you have a different name, now?”

Chuck sneers at him. “No, that’s my name. You kidnapped me because of a _coincidence!?”_

“No, you’re him! You’re my— you’re our Chuck, we were rescuing you!”

“You’re crazy!” Chuck yells at him, his voice cracking. “You’re _crazy_ , and a _traitor_ , and a _criminal,_ and _I won’t give you anything you want!”_  

Jacob gives a long, heavy sigh.  “...he ain’t in a talkin’ mood,” he says, more to Mike than Chuck.  Chuck sniffs again, eyes wet, twisting his wrists against the unforgiving edges of the belts.  “You should call up that Claire girl, see if she knows anything she—”

“ _What?!_ ”  Chuck sits up, distracted from his groggy escape attempts, horrified.  “No!  Leave her alone!”

“Dude!”  Mike cuts over him, alarmed by the sudden fresh surge of fear in Chuck’s voice.   “We’re not gonna hurt anybody!  She’s still up in Deluxe, she’s _fine!_ ”

Chuck stares at him.  “Still…” he blinks, slow and still dizzy with whatever Jacob injected. “But…” and then his expression shifts abruptly from confusion to bitter realization.  “Oh. _Oh._ ”

“Uh...buddy?”  Mike hazards, because that’s _not_ an expression Chuck usually wears when he’s thinking about Claire.  “You okay?”

“Stop calling me that,” Chuck spits.  “She was one of _you_! How many of you _are_ there?!”

“She’s a friend,” says Mike, startled.  “You should know how many of us there are, bro, come on.”

“Like I pay attention to how many _criminal pieces of garbage_ are down in this _toxic pit!_ ” Chuck yells at him, and Mike takes a sharp step back, kind of overwhelmed by the horror of Kane’s propaganda coming out of his best friend’s mouth.

“Mike. Get your head on straight, he doesn’t know us right now,” Jacob tells him, slow and clear like he’s talking to somebody who’s mostly deaf and totally stupid, and Mike just shakes his head because— because yeah, okay, but— but _no_.  

“This is Motorcity,” Mike says, leaning in, taking one of Chuck’s bound hands. “You’re free now and we’re your friends. That’s all you have to know.”

Chuck looks him in the eye for a moment that makes Mike’s breath catch in his throat, his eyes dark, his lips just a little parted.

Then he yanks Mike in by their joined hands and tries to bite his throat out. He gets a mouthful of Mike’s jacket collar and hangs on tightly, scrabbling with his tied hands to get a better grip, and Mike is tangled up and frantic not to hurt Chuck any more and the cot is tipping over again. Jacob piles in, strips Mike out of his jacket, and shoves him forcibly towards the door.

“But—” Mike protests, and Jacob shoves him again. Chuck is _screaming._

“Get _out_ , kid!”

“Are you—”

“There’s more sedative. I’ll let you know how it goes. Now _scram_.”

Mike scrams. Wanders up to the counter outside Jacob’s kitchen and sits on one of the stools, watching the neon flicker over the paintings, his elbows on the counter and his hands linked over the back of his neck, one palm against where Chuck almost got him, and he tries to stop shaking. It’ll be okay. It will all be okay. It _has_ to be okay.  

 

*

 

When Jacob finally comes and finds Mike, what feels like _hours_ later, his expression is really not okay at all.

“Well, so,” Hh sighs, and sits on the stool next to Mike, looking old and tired. “He doesn’t know much of anything anymore and what he does know, Kane put in. He’s not in any kind of mood to cooperate with us now, so I think we’ll have to keep him in the Holding Cell ‘til he simmers down some.”

“The _what_?” Mike demands.

“That old storage room towards the back, you know? Used to use it back when I did a lot more direct work with people coming down from Deluxe. Most of them were just good folks tryin’ to get free. Some of them were... Kane’s men.”

“Oh.” Mike feels his shoulders droop. “Did you, uh. What did you do with them?”

“Eh, this and that. It depended. But having an empty room with a steel jacket and locks on the outside of the door sure saved my bacon a time or two! Come on, let’s go see what shape it’s in. Think I’ve been keeping my pickles in there for a couple’a years.”

 

*

 

Jacob _has_ been keeping pickles in the room, and the air smells like dust, and vinegar, and something weirder and moldier. There’s a flat light sunk into the ceiling—the switch for it is outside in the hall— a cot built into the wall that's covered in dozens of dusty pickling jars, a toilet, several tattered bags of dirt and fertilizer stacked in a corner, and basically nothing else.

“Well, it’s been awhile,” Jacob says ruefully, scratching his beard. “Not so bad, though. Go haul the dirt off to the growing floor and come back with a broom and the other boys. I’ll move these jars to the kitchen. We’ll get it all cleaned up in no time.”

The Burners are all conscripted to help, which is good, but all they want to talk about is what’s up with Chuck, which is bad.  Mike keeps his head down as much as he can, but he’s the guy who was there when Chuck woke up and he’s the one everybody addresses their questions to.

“He really doesn’t remember us at all?” Dutch asks, sweeping up dirt and desiccated pickles. “But you two are like, the original Burners. How could he just forget?”

“I don’t know,” Mike says, for probably the hundredth time. “It’s something Kane got his scientists to work on, I guess. Maybe they’re going to try and make _everyone_ forget Motorcity. We can get Julie on it, have her try and dig up whatever she can.”

“I know what happened,” Texas says confidently. “It was in Ninja Clown Street Fighter 3. Rex Twelvepack got punched in the head by that guy with the sharks for hands and it like, turned his brain off. When he woke up he thought the sharkpunch guy was his dad. So—HWA-CHAH!” He punches the pillow on the cell’s cot. “He went around fighting the Ninja Clowns all movie, because like, he got told the _bad_ guys were the _good_ guys, and the _good_ guys were the _bad_ guys. You know? Like that. Hwah!” He punches the pillow again, then kicks the toilet.

“Don’t break that, man,” says Dutch. “So is Chuck evil now?”

“No!” Mike snaps.

“Yeah, no, he just thinks he’s a shark, probably,” Texas says. “We gotta get another shark and punch him with it, to like, reset him. Like a computer. That’s how they did it in the movie.”

“We’re not punching Chuck with _anything_ ,” Mike says firmly.  Texas rolls his eyes, but maybe something in Mike’s expression clues him in on how Mike is feeling because for a long time after that, there’s no conversation at all.

When the cell’s finished, it doesn’t look... _so_ bad. It’s clean, at least, warm and well-lit, with the sheets and pillows from Chuck’s usual bed transferred over to the cot, and a stack of his favorite old fantasy paperbacks waiting in the corner. There was a ventilation fan in the ceiling, so Dutch went ahead and put in a quick mural of blue ghosts and yellow roses that wraps around the four small walls, which maybe makes the room seem smaller and busier but also infinitely different from Deluxe’s sterile living cubes. It’s not _homey_ , but it doesn’t exactly scream _torture dungeon_.

Except for the thick steel grating that serves as a door, and locks from the outside.  

Mike hates it. Chuck’s been kept tied up and sedated the whole time, and Mike hates _that_ , and when he and Texas and Dutch all drag Chuck into the cell and lock the door, Chuck hates _them._ He leans back against the far wall, still in his stupid white Deluxe shirt, clearly too dizzy to keep his feet but still glaring poisonously.

“You can’t _do_ this to me,” he snarls.

“Uh, chyeah, we just did,” says Texas, folding his arms proudly.

Chuck lurches forward and grabs the grating of the door, rattling it viciously. Mike and Dutch jump back, though Texas doesn’t even flinch.

“This is a mistake, you Burner vermin made a _big_ mistake!” he yells. “You grabbed the wrong guy, and when I get out of here, you’ll be sorry! I’m gonna— I’ll— gut you, and skin you, and put your heads on stakes!” The threat should be funny, it’s so over-the-top, but he’s using the same strange, sure tone as his Lord Vanquisher voice and when he meets Mike’s eyes some small scared part of Mike realizes  _oh crap, he’s serious.  He wants you dead._  Mike’s stomach twists, sick and cold.

“You’re not going anywhere until you’re not a bad guy anymore,” says Texas. “Not that I don’t think you’re kind of a lot cooler like this.”

“I’ll kill you!” Chuck screams, and rattles the bars again. “I’ll chop you all into _bits_ and take those bits back to Mr Kane and he’ll throw them off his tower!”

“I’d like to see you try!” Texas laughs. He looks over his shoulder. “No, seriously, Mike, can I have the keys?”

“No!” Mike says. “Chuck, you’re staying in there until we can all figure this out. Texas, stop working him up.”

“It’s like the only workout he’s ever gotten, though. Boom! Texas put-down!”

“Texas!” Mike snaps. “Take a walk!”

Texas scoffs, then makes a big show of strutting off down the hallway.

“You want first watch?” Mike asks Dutch. “I mean. If you don’t, I can...”

“Naw, man, you get out of here, too.” Dutch waves him off.

He turns to go and Chuck screams “ _Chilton!”_ Rattling the bars again, _“Chilton, don’t you— don’t leave me here! Don’t you WALK AWAY, BURNER SCUM, LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT OF HERE!”_

He doesn’t mean to look back, but he does, at the end of the hall. Dutch has his arms wrapped around himself, his body once big wince, and Chuck’s glaring straight into Mike’s eyes.  His hair is short and his face is twisted with fury and his teeth are bared in a horrible snarl.  Mike stands frozen for a long second, staring, and Chuck glares back at him with nothing in his expression but pure, unadulterated hate.

Mike doesn’t look back again, all the way to Mutt, all the way to the darkest, emptiest outskirts of Motorcity at a three-hundred miles an hour.

 

*

 

When Nine Lives comes roaring into the garage and Julie hops out, everybody is out in the garage working.  There’s been a suspicious shortage of bots in the two days since they rescued Chuck, and that by itself would be more than enough to get Mike riled up.  But with Chuck locked up in his cell, still railing at anybody who gets close, Mike is already bouncing off the walls.  Working on Mutt distracts him at least a little, but not enough.  Everybody looks up, eager for any new distraction, as Julie rolls in.

Mike manages to act like he’s focusing on Mutt for all of forty seconds, and then Julie gets out of Nine Lives and starts to head toward him.  Mike straightens up immediately, wiping his hands.  

“What’s up?”

“Don’t get too excited,” Julie says.  “Kane’s been, uh... He’s got a lot of his people on short leashes. He’s pretty freaked out about how you guys can just pop up and abduct someone from a really high-level Executive Tower, you know?”

“You did all the work of getting us in,” Mike says, wanting to give credit where it’s due. She just rolls her eyes at him, though.

“Yeah, sure, but I can’t exactly _tell_ him why I’m not the next kid on the kidnap list, right?”

“Oh. Right.” Mike feels kind of dumb. “If you ever need us to get you out, though—”

“You’ll be the first _filthy gang of criminal lowlifes_ I call, sure.” She smiles, and Mike smiles back, even though her Kane impression is always kind of unnerving. It doesn’t feel great on top of what Chuck’s been yelling at them for days, either.

“So, what did you find on Chuck?” Dutch asks. “I mean, did you get _anything_?”

“A little bit. I’ve been trying to infiltrate R&D as best I can in what free time I’ve got _left_ , but I’m not really supposed to be there, it’s kind of a boy’s club and it’s really _really_ classified.  It’s not like I can just ask some guy, ‘so, hey, which way to the brainwashing lab!’ And trying to get in digitally is even harder...”  

She hops up and sits on Mutt’s hood.  “...Is Chuck getting _any_ better?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” Mike runs his hands through his hair. “He just yells stuff at us. Sometimes he kind of sounds like Lord Vanquisher.”

“Who?”

“You know, his— his LARP character. He would put on this voice to sound, I don’t know, regal. Commanding. This Chuck does it too, when he isn’t, uh, screaming. He makes demands. It’s kind of funny.”

Julie frowns. “It doesn’t sound very funny.”

“Yeah, it... okay, it isn’t, actually.”

They sit in silence for a little while after that.  Texas goes back to working on Stronghorn, and Dutch buries his arms in Whiptail’s engine block, murmuring quietly to ROTH.  

“We _are_ gonna fix this,” Julie says finally.  “You know that, right?”

“Yeah.”  Mike smiles, but it feels weird and fake.  “Yeah, course I do.”

“Well you’re not gettin’ anywhere until he’ll talk to us,” Dutch says pragmatically, and holds out a hand.  ROTH slaps a wrench down into it.  “Thanks, bud.  He’s not exactly in a listening mood, dunno if you noticed.”

“He’ll come around,” says Mike.

 

*

 

Four days later, Chuck has not come around.

He’s mostly worn out his voice, which is...good?  Kind of good, because he can’t really scream at them anymore.  He still makes dramatic, overblown death-threats when anyone gets too close, with increasingly impressive variety and creativity, but now he does it in an exhausted, raspy half-yell instead.  Mike tries not to get him worked up, and waits eagerly for his buddy to stop being so freaking _ticked off_ so they can just _talk_ already.

What comes after the screaming, violent rage turns out to be even worse.  Chuck just... _shuts off._ He stops coming up with gory B-movie threats and goes all quiet and despairing and doesn’t respond to anything.  Just sits all curled up in his blankets in the corner to the left side of the door, the one that's hardest to see.  Sometimes, and worst of all, Mike edges up to the grating door and hears the soft, broken sound of his best friend crying, on the other side of the door but miles away.

“I don’t like it,” Texas tells him when Mike comes to relieve him on guard duty, the third day of the Crying Phase.  “It’s weird, and he’s gotta stop.”

Which, translated from Texas-speak, means he’s just as worried and upset about this as Mike is.  Mike claps him on the shoulder in mute commiseration and takes up his position by the door.

There’s silence for a long time—ten minutes, maybe fifteen—and Mike is just starting to zone out into that twitchy, mindless state he gets into when he’s bored when there’s a faint noise from inside.

“... _Mike?_ ” says Chuck, very, very softly.

It’s the first time since they brought him back he’s said Mike’s name without any sign of fear or anger.  Mike whips around, staring through the bars, but he can’t see Chuck; he must still be huddled by the door.

“ _Mikey_?”

It’s such a relief to hear him say that again, even thick and soft and choked with tears.  Mike opens his mouth and makes a pointless kind of _huh_ noise, then clears his throat and manages, “—yeah!  Yeah, I’m right here.  You okay?”

It’s a dumb question, really.  He’s locked in an old storage closet with road grating for a door.  But Chuck makes a weak kind of half-laughing sound.

“... _no_ ,” he says.  “Mike, I...what did they do to me?”

“You—” holy crap, he totally remembers.  Mike reaches down, trying to find the key to the door but reluctant to to look away to find it in case he misses something.  “You remember me?”

“How am I supposed to forget you?”  He makes that pitiful little sobbing, laughing sound again, and Mike stops fumbling for a second and just rests his forehead against the door, eyes squeezed shut, letting relief bloom in his chest.  “I don’t know what they did to me, I...there’s a lot of blank spots, but…” he sniffs hard, takes a breath that audibly shudders.  “... _you’re really there, right?  Nobody’s messing with me, or…_ ”

Mike is going to find Kane and kick him right in the teeth.

“Just a sec,” he mutters, distracted, and finally snags the key.  “Gimme a minute, buddy, I’ll be right there.”

Chuck is right where Mike thought he might be; curled up in the corner, knees pulled up to his chest.  He jumps when the door opens, and then looks up at Mike with wide, bloodshot, teary eyes and says “...Mikey?” again in that wobbly tone of voice, and Mike drops down on his knees and throws his arms around Chuck’s hunched-up shoulders, pulling him into a tight hug.  

“ _I missed you,_ ” he says, and feels Chuck shift hesitantly, trying to push himself to his feet without letting go.  Mike helps him up, but doesn’t let go yet— _can’t_ let go yet, not yet.  Chuck still smells like Deluxe, somehow, which is distracting and makes his chest hurt abruptly, but the way he fits into Mike’s arms is so familiar it’s hard to care.  

“I missed you too.”  Chuck swallows, soft but audible, like he’s nervous.  “I missed...this.”

He pulls back just a little bit, and Mike loosens his grip reluctantly enough to let him shift his weight back and lean down to—

Oh.  

It takes Mike approximately six seconds to wrap his brain around every aspect of what’s going on and process it in its entirety, and by that time Chuck is making what seems to be an attempt to get his tongue into Mike’s mouth and holy crap this is...new. Mike has never been kissed before but it feels _right_ , it feels _great_.

“Uh?” he says when Chuck pulls back to gasp in a breath.  This is.  Okay.  Chuck.  Kissing. Awesome.

“ _Told you I missed this,_ ” Chuck mumbles, and kisses him again.  Of all the things Mike has considered about Chuck, and there have been kind of a _lot_ over the years, he hadn’t quite gotten around to thinking about what it would feel like to have one of Chuck’s hands tangled in his hair.  If he had, he considers, vague and kind of dizzy, he probably wouldn’t have thought it would feel this _good_.

“Okay,” he says, next time Chuck lets him catch a breath, “—okay.  I’m... really confused right now, buddy.”

“Mm?” Chuck starts to lean in again, not waiting for an answer—Mike plants a hand on his shoulder, just to keep him there for a second.  Definitely not to push him away, which would—wow, that would _suck_ right now, that would not be a good thing.  

“I mean, I’m not complaining,” he clarifies, before Chuck can take any of this the wrong way.  “I’m totally not, dude, just...uh...this is a new one.  I didn’t know you wanted...this.  Hah—wow.”

Chuck goes still for a second, staring at him.  

“New?”

“Yeah?”  

They stare at each other for just a second, and then Chuck blinks and leans in again to kiss him, slower this time.  Well, if he’s not worried, Mike is _totally_ not worried.  That’s been his metric for a pretty long time now, if Chuck isn’t worried then Mike can be sure there’s nothing to worry about and now Chuck is _back_ and even better he’s apparently interested in kissing now.

“Here—”  Chuck reaches out, pulling back.  “Here, gimme your arm.”

The next thing Mike is really aware of is the wall.  Namely, the fact that the wall just hit him in the face.  That his face just hit a wall.  His face hit the wall, because he was in the air and he was in the air because Chuck spun in close to him, holding on tight to his arm, and _threw_ him.

It’s the exact same move he used when he was on the booster, and Mike slides down the wall with a weird feeling of deja vu and doesn’t move for a beat or two.  Just breathes, and stares straight ahead.

Nothing feels broken, and Chuck kissed him.  His cheek feels like it’s going to be bruised pretty bad, and Chuck threw him across the room.  His arm got twisted during the throw but it doesn’t feel like anything permanent, and Chuck was _lying._

All of it was a lie.

It’s on that thought that Mike hears the door slam shut.

Chuck’s already gone down the hall by the time Mike staggers to the grating, and of course it’s locked. He has to hang there, his face pounding, his chest aching, and strain to hear anything.

“Chuck,” he calls, but of course Chuck doesn’t come back. Instead there’s a distant crash, and a lot of yelling, and some more crashing. Something splinters. Chuck starts screaming and doesn’t stop, though an alarm comes on and drowns out his voice. Mike’s eyes feel hot and his heart feels stomped flat.

He doesn’t know how long it takes, but eventually his friends come back, Julie and Texas carrying Chuck’s dead—no, no, _limp_ weight between them.

“Aww, little guy!” Texas grins when he sees Mike. “Did he kick your butt?  He totally kicked your butt.  Don’t worry, daddy Texas cleaned the whole thing up for you.”

“ _Mike_ ,” Julie says. “How’d you end up in there? _Why_ did you end up in there?”

“Uh.” Mike can feel his face start to burn. “Uhhhhh, well. He’s, uh. He’s a smart guy.”

“What, like, he made you do a math problem, and if you lost, you had to go in the cell,” Texas says, skeptically.

“He tricked you, right?” Julie asks. “Did he hide or something?”

She unlocks the door and he stumbles out, rubbing his twisted arm.

“He pretended like he remembered everything,” Mike says. “He was, uh, really convincing.”

“So you let him out,” Julie concludes, exasperated. “Mike, really?” She and Texas carry Chuck over to his cot and dump him on it. Chuck’s got a black eye, now, and a lump rising up on his forehead. Julie has abrasions all up her arms and bloody knuckles.

“Well, he kinda... got the drop on me,” Mike says. He doesn’t want to tell them about the kiss. He doesn’t even want to think about the kiss. Texas has a split lip and a vicious, bleeding bite on his wrist. Mike feels at least six different kinds of awful.

He reaches down, and runs his hand gently over the too-short blond fuzz of Chuck’s hair. Julie coughs uncomfortably, and catches his arm.

“Come on, cowboy,” she says gently. “Let’s get you fixed up.”

 

*

 

Julie’s kind enough not to comment on Mike’s burning face or rumpled hair when she patches him up, which is one of the nice things about Julie.  She knows when people aren’t in the mood to talk, and when to let them sit and deal with stuff on their own.  Chuck would probably try to make Mike talk about it if...

...well, he’s not going to now, anyway.  

What Julie does say is: “I’m going to finish your shift on guard duty. You can go lie down after this.”

For a second that sounds really, really nice.  But… “Nah.  Thanks, Jules.”

“ _Mike_.”  She gives him a look, dark-eyed and sharp and a little too familiar.  Mike resists the urge to sit to attention.  “He did a pretty good job of messing you up. I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go right back in there.”

“I’m not gonna fall for the same trick twice in a row,” Mike protests, even though some part of his heart is completely aware of exactly how much he would want to do just that.  Of how he would probably be willing to trade another shoulder-throw into the wall for another one of those kisses with Chuck’s hands in his hair.  

“You can not fall for it _tomorrow_ , cowboy. Okay?”

Mike groans in exasperation. “ _Okay._ ”

She ruffles his hair. “Also from now on we’re gonna be leaving the keys with Jacob.”

He jolts back. “ _What?_ The keys? Why?”

“So that if any of us—” and the way she says _any of us_ clearly means _you,_ “—want to open the door again, we get the guy who’s used to keeping prisoners to sign off on it.”

“But—what if there’s an emergency or something— like what if stuff is on fire, or—and we— we can’t reach him, what if we can’t _get to him_ —”

“ _MIKE,”_ she snaps, and he sits at attention without thought this time. “We are _leaving_ the keys with _Jacob_. Is that _clear?_ ”

“Yes, s—Julie. Jules.” Mike feels terrible. “You can—you can trust me.”

Julie gives a long sigh and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Sorry. Sorry, Mike, I know. You’re doing your best, this whole situation is just... so...”

“Temporary,” Mike supplies, hopefully. She gives him a shaky little smile.

“Yeah,” she says, and leans forward until her head rests against his shoulder. He rests the non-smashed half of his face against her hair, feeling strong and grateful and worried all at once, like he always does when they lean on each other and she lets him see her be scared.

She says, “You can trust me too, Mike. I’m doing everything I can to get all of this figured out. You know that, right?”

“Of course,” Mike says immediately, forcefully. “We’re all in this together.”   

Except Chuck isn’t, anymore. He’s still _gone_ , even though they’ve got his body right here, locked up safe, his big warm hands and the angry, expressive curl of his lips and the way his tongue had felt, sliding into Mike’s mouth, how tall and solid he’d been when he’d pulled Mike close...

 _Temporary_ , Mike repeats to himself. This is temporary. Chuck’ll be back, the real Chuck, _all_ of him, and until he is, Mike will wait for him.

 

*

 

Dutch is filling in as guard when Mike comes in the next morning, even though he should probably be catching some sleep at this hour.  Mike is suddenly, intensely glad Dutch didn’t have a chance to get a good look at him after Chuck broke out, because he knows for sure that his jacket was crooked and his hair was rumpled and his face was red.   Dutch isn’t nearly as nice as Julie is, or as clueless as Texas, when it comes to things people don’t want to talk about. Especially when he’s tired and cranky.

He smiles when Mike comes in, though, which is a good sign.  Even if he looks kind of worried at the same time.  

“You sure you want to do this?”

“I’m fine now, dude!”  Mike smiles. “Good as new.” He taps the biopatch Julie stuck on his face. Dutch raises his eyebrows and then sighs like _well I’m not gonna tell you what to do_ and steps away from the door.

“He’s awake,” he says.  “Don’t let him pull one over on you again, okay?”

There’s silence for a long time after he’s gone.  Mike sits outside the door and stares at the opposite wall, and doesn’t think about how last night he was a few feet away inside the cell, finding out what it felt like to kiss his best friend.

He’s just in the process of guiltily, painfully reviewing exactly how Chuck’s breath felt against his lips, when Chuck’s voice filters quietly through the metal grating beside him.

“...I’m sorry I kissed you,” he says, and he almost sounds normal.  Subdued, but familiar enough it hurts to hear.  There’s a stretch of silence, then he adds, “...I’ve gotta get out of here though.  You can’t keep me in here forever.”

“I don’t want to keep you in here at all, dude.”

“So let me _go_.”  Chuck’s voice breaks just a little bit on the word, like he knows it’s hopeless to even ask, and Mike feels that sharp pang shoot through his chest again, sick and awful.  “Just let me go _home._  I miss my room, and—and my view of the city and having a  _job_ and—I miss the sun…” he trails off on a longing, quiet noise, almost a groan.  “... _I don’t want to die down here,_ ” he finishes finally, too quiet.  “I’m not gonna stop trying to escape.  I can’t.  You can hurt me all you want—”

“I don’t _want_ to hurt you!”

“—but I’m gonna get out of here and I’m gonna go home.”

“You _are_ home.”

“Yeah, tell it to Security,” says Chuck bitterly.  At any other time, under any other circumstances, the Deluxe-ism would make Mike laugh. Not right now though, not when Chuck says it like he’s not even thinking about the words.  There are so many tiny things about him that are just... _wrong_ , now.  Deluxian where Mike is used to Motorcity.

“So, uh, why _did_ you kiss me?” Mike finally asks. He can’t help it. He can’t stop _thinking_ about it.

He doesn’t expect Chuck to look at him flatly and go, “ _Seriously?_ ”

“...yeah?”

“Seriously, man? You think I’m your dead boyfriend.  That’s a _huge_ tactical advantage for me.”

“You’re not!” Mike can feel his face heating up. “I mean, you’re not my dead boyfriend. You’re not dead _or_ my boyfriend.”

“Yeah, thanks for clearing that up, can I go now?” Chuck says acidly.

“You’re Chuck,” Mike says, for probably the millionth time. “You’re our Chuck, and you’re a Burner, and my best friend, but that was, uh _._ That was it.”

“So your dead could-totally-have-been-your-boyfriend was blind and crazy in addition to being degenerate Murdercity vermin, I guess. Seriously, you guys weren’t—?”

“No.”

“Oh. Huh.” Chuck looks doubtful. “ _Really_ you weren’t together?”

“ _No!_ ”  Mike can tell he’s still not convinced.  “Look, you were never into me like that, okay?  I didn’t think you even—we were just friends.”

“Nobody with half a brain is ‘just friends’ with hot ex-military jocks who look at them like you won’t stop looking at me,” says Chuck, and crosses his arms.  “I don’t know if you think lying to me about him will make me feel better about—”

“Hot?”

Chuck pauses, tirade momentarily interrupted.  “What?”

“You just called me ‘hot’,” says Mike dumbly.

“Oh, shut up,” says Chuck, but he sounds more tired than actually angry.  “Don’t give me that crap, you know you’re hot.  Guys like you always do.”

That—is not what Mike figured he was going to say.  It actually does a way better job of shutting him up than just about anything else Chuck could have said to him, not that Chuck probably meant it to have that effect.  In fact he seems to take Mike’s sort of poleaxed gape as willful ignorance, because he rolls his eyes and keeps talking.

“Come on. The hair and the face and the… T-shirt…” his eyes flick up and down.  Mike looks down too: it’s just his T-shirt, the same kind he wears every day.  This is a clean one, Jacob just bullied everybody into doing their laundry, but it’s not like his others look any different.

“...this is the only kind of T-shirt I own,” he says, a little bit dumbly.  When he looks up, Chuck is still glaring at Mike’s chest like it wronged him somehow.  “Dude, what’s wrong with my shirt?”

“Could you wear it any _tighter_?”  

“Huh?”

“It’s, like… _painted on_.”

“Wh—no it’s not.”  Mike looks down at his own chest again—his shirt _fits,_ and maybe he’s had a bit of a growth spurt lately, but that’s not really—it’s not—  “No, dude, seriously—you’re being weird about this, okay?  My shirts are fine.”

“You didn’t wear your cadet uniform that tight,” Chuck says, more than a little bit snippily, and folds his arms over his chest.  “I’m just _saying—_ ”

“Wait.”  Mike holds up a hand, heart suddenly pounding.  “Hold up, hold up.  Say that again.”

“Huh?”  Chuck scowls.  “What?  ‘You didn’t wear your Kane Co. uniform’—”

“How do you know how I wore my uniform?”

Chuck stares at him for a long second.  “I,” he says, and the color is rapidly draining from his cheeks.  “I must’ve—I saw a picture—”

“No you didn’t.”  Mike leans in, talking louder as Chuck backs away from him, more eager as Chuck’s hand rises sharply to press against his skull.  “You saw me in uniform, Chuckles _listen to me,_ you were there the day I was accepted into the Junior Cadets, you gotta remember—”

“No, nononono _no_.”  Chuck sinks down onto the cot, head in his hands, eyes squeezed shut.  “No!  Stop— _messing_ with me, why are you _doing_ this?!”

“I’m not!”

“You are! You’re _putting things in my head!”_

“No I’m _not!”_

“Yes you are! There’s a— there’s a— a— a chair, and you _put me in it_ , and you’re making me remember things that aren’t _true_ , you’re making me _one of you!”_

“Dude, _Deluxe_ did this to you!  Motorcity’s what’s real, who you are here is real! It’s Deluxe that got you and made you think you belonged there!”

“I was _born_ in Deluxe,” Chuck moans. “I _do_ belong there!”

“Yeah—yes, okay, you were.”  Which doesn’t exactly make Mike’s case any stronger, but the last thing he’s going to do right now is lie.  Chuck’s got enough lies inside his head as is.  “That part’s true, your parents were in research.  They helped make the pods float.  You liked to tell me about them, remember?”

“Shut up,” says Chuck, a sudden snap.  “They’re _dead._ Stop pretending you know—”

“I _do_ know!”  Mike presses his palms to the grill and wishes he could open the door.  Wishes he could trust Chuck not to try to hurt him if he did.  “They died when you were six, right?  And Kane Co. kicked you into the system, and everybody in the foster pods had somebody to room with.  Chuck, _tell me I’m wrong._  You were in a pod with another kid your age.”

“Sure! So?!”

“What did he look like?”  Mike lets his head thump against the grating, feels the cold metal bite into his skin.  “ _What was his name_?”

“I don’t know! I was a kid, it’s normal not to remember much from when you were a kid!”

God, he really doesn’t remember.  Mike knew that, but it still hurts to hear.  “What classes did you take for your education courses?”  he presses, "What did you take for electives?" and Chuck makes a noise like the words are actually _painful_ , still holding his head, curling in on himself like burning paper, crumpling.  

“When did you start at that job we found you in?  That— that— you're  _so smart_ , Chuck, how were you okay with just  _fetching_ people stuff? When did you start wearing your hair shorter, dude, you never liked having it short—”

“ _SHUT UP!_ ”

There’s no way for Chuck to hit him, but Mike still jumps back from the door as Chuck slams a fist into it, shaking all over, sickly-pale.  He sways a second later, leaning on the door like it’s the only thing holding him up.

“ _Leave me alone._ ”

“Your hand—dude, you’re bleeding—”

“ _LEAVE ME ALONE!_ ”

 

*

 

Julie just cleaned up the mess from Mike’s scrapes and Texas’s bite mark last night, and in the end she’s the one who ends up fixing Chuck’s torn-up knuckles.  Mike tries to say that he should go in and do it, but Julie fixes him with a tight, hard look and says “You’ll make it worse,” unflinching in the face of Mike’s startled hurt. So he has to content himself with lurking at the end of the hall.  She doesn’t shy away when Chuck gives her that sullen, calculating look like he’s working out the best way to take her down: she meets his eyes the whole time.

“...Deluxe,” says Chuck, when she’s well into the process.  Julie’s hands twitch, but she doesn’t flinch away from the way he watches her.  “You’re from Deluxe too.”

“You remember that?”  Julie finishes snipping off the last of the torn skin.  “Anything else?”

“So that part’s true.”

“Yes.” She pockets the tiny scissors.

“What are you doing down here?”  Chuck winces as she smoothes on antiseptic sealing gel.  “You have to know how much better it is up there.”

“I know a lot of things about how it is up there,” says Julie evenly.  

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I work in high management.”  She picks up a roll of old-fashioned fabric bandages.  “And the things I see there make me think Kane needs to be stopped.”

“Like _what._ ”

“Like the people that  _disappear_ for being out after curfew,” says Julie, and carefully knots the bandages around his knuckles.  “Like the conditions in the factories. Like all the times elites ‘escorted’ some poor kid out of Kane’s office with blood all over his face.  You ever saw the R&D people in your new job? Or what happened to Executives whose departments weren't up to quota?”

“It’s not a new job,” says Chuck doggedly.  “I’m a—”

“ _Did you ever see them?_ ”

Chuck closes his mouth sharply, meets her eyes for just a second and then looks away.  Julie nods and lets go of his hand.  “Try not to punch any more doors,” she says, “we’re not exactly swimming in medical supplies down here,” and turns her back on him.  Chuck makes an aborted movement like he wants to try to grab her: Julie pauses, half-turning her head, and he freezes and then slowly retreats, watching her, brows furrowed.  

He’s quiet for the rest of the day, but no one likes it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to splickedylit for cowriting, editing, and the middle illustration!

 

“It’s temporary,” says Julie.

Even before he understands the words, Mike feels something heavy and unyielding in his chest slowly start to loosen. He braces himself against Jacob’s half disassembled oven.

“What?” he says, a second late.

“He’s going to heal,” says Julie again, and something about the way she looks at him makes Mike think she knows _exactly_ how hard the words hit him.  Like she understands the hot rush of relief that’s pouring through him.  “If we let him heal, eventually he’ll be back to normal.”

Mike sits down hard, runs a hand through his hair and lets out a staggered, stupid, breathless little laugh.

“How long?” Texas says, leaning out of the oven’s guts.  “Any idea?  ‘Cause Texas is a man of _action_. A guy like this ain’t meant for guardin’ doors.”

“Not really.”  Julie sounds apologetic, like this is somehow not good enough.  “But he’s already starting to remember, right?”

“Yeah!”  Mike’s voice comes out way louder and more excited than he means it to.  “Are you sure?  You’re sure, right?”

“Everything I could dig up used the word ‘revert’,” Julie says.  “One of them had a picture in it and I’m almost 100% sure it was him.”

“Show me,” Mike says.

Julie purses her lips at him, nose wrinkled, brows furrowed, and goes, “ _Ehh,”_ really judgmentally.

“Julie!” Mike protests, squaring his shoulders. “Come on!”

“That’s just gonna make you depressed and junk, little man,” Texas says bluntly, climbing to his feet, and elbows him. “Here, Trixie, let Daddy Texas handle it.”

Julie looks at both of them, and Mike tries to look bold and commanding and trustworthy and not like a guy who’s been taking Jacob’s oven apart and cleaning all the pieces because he’s kind of going just a little bit crazy in between missions.

“Okay,” Julie says, and Mike perks up, but then she says, “Texas, come on,” and the two of them go over to the corner of the kitchen. When Mike tries to follow them he is fixed with _unnervingly_ similar stern glares, so he throws up his hands in exasperated defeat and goes back to scrubbing crusty gunk off oven parts. With maybe a _little_ too much savage enthusiasm. He can’t hear what they’re saying all the way over there, anyway, so he might as well scrub things _really loudly_ and throw metal bits around _really hard_ , because no one tells him _anything,_ he’s only the leader when things are _actually blowing up_ , it’s not like he could _contribute much_ to a discussion about what kind of _torture happened to his best friend_ , no, Julie’s gonna talk about it with _TEXAS_.

 

“Okay, I know Jacob is like, _smart_ and all—”

Mike startles. He’d managed to totally forget that Claire had come along with Julie.

“— but I really don’t buy that people are supposed to eat plants.”

“What?” he asks blankly.

Claire is standing there holding a carrot with the same uncertain dismay she might hold a blast cannon slug, or a maglev wrench, pinching it between her delicate fingertips and holding it out at arm’s length.

“That’s a carrot,” Mike points out.

“Really?” Claire asks. “I thought it was, um, kale. Jacob is really big on kale? Lots to say about… kale.”

“Kale is like a bunch of leaves,” Mike says. “I think.”

Claire examines her carrot dubiously. “This is too crazy,” she reports. “I mean, if people were meant to eat plants, we’d be animals, right?”

“People _are_ animals,” Texas says, looking up from his dumb little conference with Julie. “Texas is a lean mean fighting _beast! HWAH!_ _SCIENCE FACTS!_ ” He punches through one of Julie’s screens, force-quitting it, and Julie flicks his ear. “Hey! Foul!”

Claire looks thoroughly disdainful. “Yeah, maybe people are like that down _here_. But it’s _so_ not natural.”

“So, uh.” Mike looks across the room at Texas and Julie. Texas looks at him and shakes his head very seriously while Julie avoids his gaze entirely, so, okay. Fine, whatever. “...what are you up to today, Claire?”

“Oh, Julie’s gonna drive me over to the Amazons when I get done here. She asked me to like…” Claire gives a little grimace, “...you know. Visit. Chuck. Like? See if he remembers anything, because he, you know... _likes_ me, and all. Though I really don’t know, he didn’t know me at all when I found him in Deluxe.”

“What was he like?”

Claire shrugs and puts the carrot down on the stripped-down oven range. “Weird. Weirder than usual. Like, dumb? I mean I mentioned _algorithms_ and he didn’t know what those were.”

Mike’s not exactly clear on what algorithms are either, apart from the fact that Chuck likes them and likes to optimize them when he’s stressed.  Mike hasn’t actually seen Chuck pull up any screens, work on any projects, _make_ anything, since Kane Co...did whatever they did.  It’s not a huge deal--shouldn’t be a huge deal--but it still makes a heavy kind of ache try to take up residence in Mike’s chest.  He pulls out a heating coil and scrubs at it instead of thinking about that.  

“...Could work,” he says, too late and quiet.  Even to his own ears, he sounds unenthusiastic.

“I mean, if he didn’t recognize _you_ ,” Claire starts, and then sighs and shakes her head, rubbing one temple.  “...Whatevs.  I just wanna do whatever we’re doing and go.  Like, don’t get me wrong, you’re all okay?  But Foxy is, like, objectively cooler.”

Mike huffs out a startled laugh. “Ow,” he grins, putting a hand over his heart.

“I said you guys are _okay!_ ” Claire protests.

“You don’t think we’re cool?”

“Mike, you live in some old guy’s garage and you wear—” she makes a huge gesture, “—basically garbage, _you’re not cool_. Sor- _ry!_ Can we just get this done?”

Mike looks over at Texas and Julie, who are bent over some kind of videofeed. Julie’s face is drawn and intent and Texas is rubbing his chin, frowning— are they looking at Chuck? Are they watching him get tortured?

“Let’s go,” Mike says, and leads Claire out of the kitchen before Julie and Texas can decide there’s more stuff Mike isn’t allowed to do about Chuck.

They meet Dutch coming up the hall.

“Hey, Mike. And, uh, Claire. Where’s Texas? He should have been on shift like, fifteen minutes ago. Did he forget? I got things to do today!”

“He’s talking with Julie,” Mike says.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.” Mike really doesn’t want to go into it. “Look, you go grab him, Claire’s here to see Chuck, I’ll keep an eye on things.”

Dutch gives him a long, skeptical look, then shrugs, waves, and slouches off.

When they get to the cell door and Chuck sees Claire, he doesn’t hold himself anything like how he used to around Claire. He doesn’t blush or curl in on himself, doesn’t flail helplessly with his hands or wrap his arms around himself in bashful mortification, doesn’t smile sheepishly, lean toward her, blush behind his overgrown hair.

This Chuck, this cruel Deluxe version, crosses his arms over his chest, shoulders back, chin up, and _looms_ at her from just behind the bars. It… it probably shouldn’t make Mike’s mouth go a little dry. Mike probably shouldn’t keep forgetting that Chuck is, objectively, a pretty big guy. Who can slam him up against the wall. Into the wall. Whatever.

“So you _are_ working with these creeps,” Chuck says to her.

“Takes one to know one,” Claire says, unimpressed. She puts her hands on her hips and looks right up at Chuck, even though she’s got to tilt her head way back.

“Ha, ha,” Chuck says. “Did they bring you down here to mess with me or something? Chilton think I was dumb enough to fall for that twice?”

“Well, you _did_ get some kind of lobotomy,” Claire says. “Julie says you’ll get better, but you know, I kind of like you in there.”

She puts her palm flat against the grating, and smiles brightly when Chuck glares.

Mike didn’t know Claire actually _disliked_ Chuck. He feels really uncomfortable about it now.

“Hey, uh,” he says, and they both frown at him. Mike takes a hasty step back, raising his hands, and doesn’t say anything else.

“So what are they paying you?” Chuck asks. “You’ve got a good future, if you weren’t lying about that at the tower. I get why nasty freaks and rejects like Gordy and Chilton run down here to hide, but what could this dump possibly offer to get someone like you to work against your home?”

“Well, FYI, I’m not working against Deluxe,” Claire says. “There’s more—”

“You’re either with us or against us,” Chuck says, and he turns his head to spear Mike with a dark, awful look. How many times has Mike heard Kane say that?

“There’s _more_ than Deluxe,” Claire snaps. “And it’s not _against_ Deluxe that there’s _more_ than it. It’s just— it just _is!_ Motorcity is _gross_ , and _dirty_ , and _ugly_ , and _dangerous_. But like, you just said, _there are people like that!_ So there needs to be places like this. I think— I think Mister Kane is wrong. And Julie’s right. People should get to choose how to live. People should be free.”

“Well okay, I’ll get right on that as soon as you get your friends to _let me out of this cage_ ,” Chuck says acidly.

Claire just crosses her arms. “You actually already chose how to live and you came down here to work with Julie and Mike to make things better for people. Just because some messed-up scientists made you forget that for awhile doesn’t mean we should like, let you do whatever messed-up things you think is a good idea, right now! You don’t even know what an algorithm is! _I_ know what an algorithm is! Because you usually never shut up about optimizing them!”

“I don’t _care_ what an algorithm is!” Chuck yells at her. “I just want to go _home_!’

“An algorithm is a procedure or sequence of steps for solving a problem,” Claire says. “Like what the Burners are doing with you right now, _creep_.”

Mike blinks at her, surprised and suddenly a little happy.

“ _Yeah_ ,” he realizes. “Yeah, we’re going to fix this.”

“No, you’re not,” Chuck growls, and hooks his fingers through the bars, glaring at him. “I’m getting out of here no matter what you say or who you have say it, _Chilton_. I’m going to be _free,_ and Mister Kane will tear all of you guys apart on live feed, and I’m going to _watch._ ”

Claire takes a step back, disgusted and a little afraid, and Mike puts a hand on her shoulder. She doesn’t need to stick around and listen to Chuck when he gets like this, all gruesome and vicious.

“I think we’re done here for now,” he says to her. “Thanks, though.”

“Yeah, sure, glad to help,” she says, with a brittle, reflexive smile _._ “See you!”

After she goes, Chuck lets out a long sigh, and slumps against the grating door.

“So you liked him and he liked her,” he says. “That’s fun.”

“What?”

Chuck nods down the corridor. “Her. That’s why you kept saying Motorcity Chuck wasn’t your boyfriend.” He gives a sudden, sharp grin. “He always liked Deluxe more than _you_ , huh?”

Mike feels like he just got stabbed. “It wasn’t like that!” he says. It hadn’t been... political. Had it? He hadn’t even been jealous. Not really. Chuck didn’t ever like him like that, so—

“Your Chuck was never yours,” this Chuck says, still smiling, a white slice of teeth behind the bars. “However he ended up down here. Whatever he agreed to. However hot he thought you were, with your— attitude, and tight shirts, and violence, and stuff. He took one look at something clean and healthy and _good_ and that was it, he wanted out. He wanted _better_.”

Mike is breathing unsteadily and too fast. “It wasn’t _like_ that _,”_ he insists. “Claire’s a nice girl. I was— I wanted him to be happy.”

“So you admit he was never gonna be happy with you?” Chuck says, grinning horribly. “Because no one could be happy with you. You’re a dangerous, crazy traitor who hurts anyone dumb enough to let you get your hands on them.”

Mike takes a step back, sick and horrified.

“Chuck,” he says.

“I hate how you say my name,” Chuck says, low and fierce and brutally sincere. “I hate you. I hate everything you’ve ever done to me. If your stupid friends ever wise up they’re going to hate you too for whatever you’ve done to _them_.”

“No,” says Julie, startling them both. “We won’t.” She tucks her arm into Mike’s and pulls him away from the cell grating. “Come on, cowboy. It’s Texas’s shift.”

“I got this, Tiny. Take five,” Texas says, and reaches up to punch Mike’s shoulder on his way past.

That’s...good.  Some part of Mike, some distant, tactical part, knows when Chuck is lashing out Texas can let it roll off him.  He never really listened to Chuck when he was a Burner, and now that he’s “Brainwash-Sharkhands-Chuck” Texas has taken to just talking loudly over him, or tuning out and then jumping back into Chuck’s furious, frustrated tirades with non-sequiters that throw him off.  Texas can handle it.

Mike knows that.  It’s not hard to figure out, but it still stings. Even with his arm smarting from Texas’s affection and Julie pressing warm and sharp against his side, he still finds himself looking back. Chuck is still leaned against the grating door, watching them, and his expression is... sad. Lost. Almost regretful. Then their eyes meet, and Chuck sneers, and turns away.

 

*

 

After the thing with Claire, Chuck spends nearly a whole day being _polite,_ even to Mike.  Then he asks for a towel and some soapy water. He’s really dirty, he explains— again, weirdly polite—and he’d like to change that. The Burners confer about it, decide he’s definitely up to something, decide they still can’t really justify letting the guy just sit around in his own gross B.O forever, and go get some washing stuff.

They decide to have Mike open the door just a little, Dutch push a bucket of warm water and soap and towel through the crack, and Julie stand by with her boomerang. Texas is stationed at the far end of the hall, cracking his knuckles.

Chuck stands against the far wall, hands clasped behind his back. Just before Mike pulls the door back closed, Chuck lunges forward and _stomps_ his foot hard on the cement floor. The motion and noise startles all of them badly: Mike yanks the door shut on Dutch’s arm, and Julie shouts and throws her boomerang hard at the grating. It bounces off with a sizzle, the metal going red for a moment.

Chuck gives them all a long, measuring stare, then gets back against the wall. Dutch pulls his arm out of the door, moaning, and Mike closes it properly. His hands are shaking a little from the adrenaline as he locks it.

“Is it broken?” he asks.

“No!  Hurts like crazy, though.”

“I’m really sorry—”

“Not _your_ fault, man.” Dutch glares into the cell at Chuck, who glares back, then starts taking off his shirt. After he pulls it over his head he fixes the same malevolent glare on Mike and goes for the catch of his pants.

“Ahaha, okay! Let’s clean that up, buddy,” Mike tells Dutch, hastily, and drags him off. Julie hurries after them.  

“Do I have to keep watch for this?” Texas wants to know. “Because this is _not_ Texas’s favorite kinda show, if you get me.”

“Texas can watch the floor for a while,” Mike calls over his shoulder. “Just keep an ear on him, man!”

Mike’s helped Dutch clean off his arm and is bandaging the torn skin when the alarms go off again. Julie looks up from yet another unsuccessful R&D hack and heaves a huge, exasperated sigh.

“Really!?” she demands. “Again?”

They pile out into the hallway and, when they can’t see Chuck, split up. Julie goes back to check the cell and finds the hinges melted through from sustained plasma fire, and a furious, somewhat singed Texas, hogtied with torn strips of his own jumpsuit.

“He summoned like a bunch of shadow ninjas to do all the fighting for him!” he reports, then fidgets under Julie’s unimpressed stare and hurries off hastily into the hideout to join in the search.

Dutch and Jacob nearly clobber each other in the grow room, then go out to search the kitchens and garages. Mike finds Chuck fetched up against the front blast doors, shirtless, his pale blue Deluxe pants soaked and singed, furiously hammering at the keypad with a wrench. From the smoking, twisted ruin of the keypad and the new scratches all around the interlocked teeth of the door, he’s been at it since the alarm went off.  
“Hi there,” Mike says, holding his hands up, then has to duck fast when Chuck spins around, his slingshot unfolding in a blaze of green and silver. He stitches a fast, vicious line of plasma bolts after Mike as he dashes for cover behind the nearest car— Nine Lives, sorry, Julie!— then peppers the body of it with suppressing fire.

“So, you, uh, you remembered your slingshot!” Mike calls out, over the ping and sizzle of impact. “That’s good!”

That he hasn’t remembered the pin code to the door, or how to deprogram a simple lockbox, is... also good, probably, though it makes Mike feel sick in the newly familiar way most of what’s wrong with Chuck makes him feel sick.

A flash of motion catches his eye.  Julie runs into the room, boomerang in one hand, standing _right_ out in the open.  Mike gets halfway out from behind Nine Lives, yelling “ _Jules, look out!_ ” before Chuck whips back around to him and fires off three shots that come within inches of his face, forcing him back behind the car’s shuddering chassis.

Chuck turns his sights on Julie as soon as Mike is under control, but she started running as soon as he took his eyes off her and she’s already closing the gap between them, dodging vivid green plasma-bolts.  Chuck makes a high, wordless scream of frustration and anger and swings his wrench in a flat, brutal arc that collides with her ribs— then passes right through.

Another Julie swings up and over Stronghorn to tackle him from behind, struggling to get a solid grip on him with hands still scabbed and bruised from the last fight. She’s not a great close-in fighter, especially against a guy with a reach like Chuck, but she’s smart about her holograms and hard to trip up. Once she twists Chuck’s wrench out of his hand and throws it across the room they’re evenly matched: he can’t use his slingshot against any version of her that gets too close, and they keep him too busy dodging and swinging to try and take out further targets.

“Little help here, cowboy!” Julie yells, falling back on the defensive after a solid punch to the face snaps her head back and splits her lip. It jolts Mike back to his senses. He dives out from around Nine Lives and towards Chuck, grabbing his arm.  Chuck spins around, sees who has hold of him, and dives forward, elbowing and punching and trying to bite until Mike finally gets a good grip and pins him. He thrashes and howls underneath Mike just as frantically as when he was first caught—first  _rescued—_ sweat sticking his short hair up in dark spikes, gleaming on his bare chest.

Dutch and Jacob reach them, and Dutch jabs his omnitool into Chuck’s side with, in Mike’s opinion, _way_ too much triumph.  Chuck seizes and shudders and finally slumps again, into his team’s waiting hands.

“I’m gettin’ _real_ tired of this,” Dutch says, once Chuck’s strapped to the cot in the recovery room. “What happens if he remembers everything but still wants to bail on us, huh? It’s bad enough to be fighting the guy hand-to-hand all the time, now he’s got his freakin’ biotech back! Tomorrow he’s gonna wake up knowing how to make our cars _eat_ us!”

“If I had to bet on which of us could make the most trouble, before all this, I don’t think I’d have bet on Chuck,” Julie admits. She’s holding a washrag up to her mouth, blood and lipstick already smeared against her cheek. “Man! He hits hard, when he’s motivated enough.”

“We’re gonna have to block him off from his tech, somehow,” Dutch says. “ _Before_ he remembers he’s a computer genius.”

“Cut off his hands, sew guns on,” suggests Texas, immediately. “Gunhands! Pew pew!”

“How would that help!?” Dutch demands.

“Okay, dinosaurs, then. With laser teeth! K-chaw!” Texas makes his hands into chompy teeth and ‘bites’ Dutch’s hair.

“Quit it!”

“Well, we can’t handcuff him,” Julie says. “I mean, that’d be pretty harsh, and I think your arms drop off or something if you’re handcuffed for too long?”

“Got it. First handcuffs, _then_ dinohands.” Texas chomps another handful of Dutch’s hair, and gets his hat flipped off his head. “Hey! Uncool!”

“Can we, I don’t know, uninstall it from him?” Mike asks Dutch. “Like delete the programs?”

“Yeah, maybe, if he wasn’t _Chuck_.” Dutch points out. “Me and Julie can do some basic modding and customization—”

“I can do more than _basic_ , thanks,” says two of Julie, looking irritated, before one blips out.

“—yeah, okay, whatever, I’m just saying, Chuck is in another class. _And_ he’s scared of his own shadow. He’s probably got firewalls for his firewalls. He’s probably got defense routines for if you give him a handshake wrong. And I _know_ he’s got a ton of links into the systems he installed in Mutt, plus backdoors into each and every one of _our_ cars. We’re not gonna be able to just get in there and click ‘delete’.”

“So we tape oven mitts to his hands or something,” Julie says.

“Bzzt, _lame_ ,” says Texas.

“Tape! That’s it! We could try electrical insulation tape,” Dutch says, sitting up straight. “Hold on, I think I got a roll somewhere around here—” he rushes off, and then comes back with the roll on his wrist like a bracelet.

“Okay, uh— Julie, pull up your comm, we can see how much—”

“Why am I the test subject? I'll put it on you!”

“I’ll do it,” Mike cuts in. “If it hurts or anything, I wanna know.”

“It shouldn’t,” Dutch says. “You gotta take your jacket off, though. And pull up all your holotech.”

Mike does so, and everyone watches with interest as Julie grabs the tape away and then spirals a neat coating of tape from Mike’s wrist to his elbow. Unfortunately, every window display stays shining bright and crisp the whole way along.

“Dang,” Dutch says.

“Maybe we need another layer?” Julie wonders.

A second and then third layer is applied, and makes no difference whatsoever.

"You put it on wrong, Janet," Texas says. "Try it with the sticky side going on the other way, so it, like, catches the electricity."

"That is not even a little bit how this works," Dutch says. 

"Yeah, that's what I  _said_ , it's not  _working_ —" 

“Maybe the Cablers have better tape?” Julie asks. “They do a lot of work with electrical systems, right?”

“Oh! Man, yeah! I could go ask Tennie!” Dutch jumps to his feet. “I’ll go do that right now!”

Mike picks at the tape on his arm, then winces. “Guys...? How do I get this off?”

Julie, grinning like a jerk, puts another layer of tape on him. 

 

*

 

The Cablers don’t just have better insulation tape, they have lock-down cuffs.  An instant shut-down for any kind of implants, with a unique, programmable four-digit lock-code.

“Eh, you know, sometimes you just gotta take a guy offline for awhile,” Tennie says, installing a sturdy silver and blue ring around each of Chuck’s wrists. Dutch is holding very firmly onto Chuck’s hands, for all that he’s unconscious.

“And this’ll hold him?”

“For a while,” Tennie says. “You got maybe a week. Let me know innn... five days, maybe. I’ll come back with a new pair to swap out.”

“If he’s not better by then,” Mike says, crossing his arms. Everyone looks at him kind of pityingly. “What? He’s remembering stuff! He’s _gonna_ come back.”

“I don’t know, Mike,” Dutch sighs. “How long are we gonna give it? It’s already been ten days!”

“We’ll give it as long as it _takes_ ,” Mike snaps. “And maybe that’s going to be before Tennie comes back, okay?”

“It’s _not_ okay!” Dutch snaps back, waving his arms. “I mean, have you seen the shape we’re in? He tried to hit Julie with a _wrench,_ Mike! He got my arm all messed up and he didn’t even _care_ , dude, I know we all miss Chuck but this Deluxe guy is _a real jerk_.”

“He’s scared and confused!” Mike defends him. “You gotta cut him some slack, he thinks we kidnapped him!”

“ _Yeah_ , Mike, I _know_ , that’s not the _point_ —”

“And what is the _point_ —”

“Uh, guys,” Tennie says, and Mike and Dutch get, abruptly, out of each other’s faces. She’s backed away from the cot, but Chuck’s holding onto her arm, clearly trying to struggle after her.

“No, nonono— lady, please,” Chuck slurs, still groggy and half-conscious but holding on with desperate strength. “Please, you gotta help me, these guys are crazy, you gotta— you gotta get me out of here, or—or—or tell someone, please, if you could just tell someone I’m down here—”

Tennie grimaces, trying to peel Chuck off. “Chuck, I’m really sorry, but—”

“I’m not him!” Chuck cries. “They got the wrong guy, I’m not that Chuck, I belong in Deluxe, please help, please help me—”

“Get off her!” Dutch hits him with the omnitool again. Chuck screams, sharply, and Mike grabs his convulsing limbs and wrestles them back down, pinning him to the cot as the spasms fade to weak struggles and then to trembling. He’s crying, and it’s ugly, and horrible, and Mike can’t stand for Tennie to be seeing Chuck like this.

“So, thanks for coming by, Tennie!” he says, with forced cheer. “See you in five days!”

“Mike,” Tennie says, reaching out as if she wants to touch his shoulder.

“Bye!” Mike says, grinning really widely.

Dutch glares at him, then goes and puts his arm around his girlfriend. “Come on, I’ll drive you home. Mike and I can hash this out later.”

“A _lot_ later,” Mike says, still grinning.

“ _Man_ ,” Dutch says, but he leaves. Mike watches them go down the hall; Tennie catches Dutch’s hand when he’s almost to the end of it, saying something too quiet to hear, and Dutch shakes his head and puts a hand out to steady himself against the wall.  

For just a second, slumped there, he looks painfully tired.  Then Tennie nods and squeezes his hand, and they vanish around the end of the hallway together.  

“ _...help,_ ” Chuck mumbles, bleary and barely conscious.  “ _Help me._ ”

Mike pulls the blanket over his shivering body, runs his hand over Chuck’s short hair just once, and then locks the door behind him.

 

*

 

Dutch is back the next morning, and to his credit he doesn’t sound bitter or mad when he says “good morning” to Mike—just tired.  He takes his shift without complaining, although when he comes out he seems confused, maybe, or worried.

“He’s _definitely_ gettin’ smarter,” he reports to Mike when Mike comes in. “Had a whole lotta questions about Tennie. And about the new additions.”  He wraps a thumb and forefinger around his own wrists, miming the suppressor bracelets.  

“What’d you tell him?”

Dutch snorts. “I’m not crazy, man, I didn’t tell him nothin’ about anything. And, hey—I thought it was Julie’s shift?”

“She had something come up at work,” says Mike.  “Thought I’d cover for her.”

Dutch gives him a look that clearly says _you’re about three wheels short of a car_.  But he doesn’t comment, just shrugs and pushes himself up.  

“And he wants some more clothes,” he says.  “I’ll get you some of his old ones, you can put them through the door for him.”

“Wants” is a strong word, it turns out.  Chuck’s Deluxe clothes have gotten way too torn to wear, but he wears his regular Motorcity clothes with obvious resentment, and picks unhappily at the dark blue and black fabric. Within a couple of minutes he’s peeled the Burner logo off his shirt, glaring vindictively down at his chest until every fleck of the patch is gone, then started in on the extra shirts from the box Mike pushed through.  Mike isn’t so sure if he likes the change of wardrobe, either: Chuck looks too normal, now, even with his hair short, and it hurts more when he glares.

Also, Chuck is a fine one to talk about guys who go around with their shirts too tight; the healthy weight he put on in Deluxe make his old blue shirts fit _pretty closely_ around the chest and arms. Apparently running around a tower all day carrying drinks and equipment for fancy Kane Co Executives gives a better all-around workout than fighting desperately for your life a couple times a week.

Or it could be because Chuck is apparently bored and stir-crazy enough in his tiny cell to actually start working out.

“You do push-ups?” he asks, completely startled by the businesslike way Chuck had just sat up, done a few stretches, and gone at it.

“What, your Chuck— never did push-ups?” Chuck asks, doing push-ups. “Texas was — saying something about that, but he’s—kind of— insulting about everything, so I— couldn’t tell.”

“He’s trying to help,” Mike defends, automatically.

“Yeah, he— gave me some pointers. On my form.” Chuck manages thirty and flops on to his side for a break. Stretched full-length, arms over his head, he goes from one end of the cell to the other.

“It’s good,” Mike says, staring at his bare stomach. “Uh. Your form. Looks good.”

“Yeah, well, I’m going to punch him in the face again next time I get out of here,” Chuck says. “We agreed.” He makes a goofy sort of arm-flexing pose from the floor. “I get a free punch next time because I beat him last time, so I gotta make it count.”

“We could probably install a pull-up bar in there,” Mike says without thinking about it.

“Yeah, Mikey, _please_ stick a big metal pole in here with me,” Chuck laughs. “ _That_ won’t go badly for you guys.”

Mike laughs, too, leaning against the door, and it’s comfortable for a long moment.

“You Burners,” Chuck finally says. “You’re all just kids, aren’t you? Like except for that old guy, you’re just a bunch of kids. You’re my age. You’re _interns_. You’re a bunch of criminal interns.”

“We’re not that young,” Mike says, defensively. “I mean, I started in the Junior Cadets at fourteen, I’ve gotten plenty of training for this.”

“‘This?’ You mean arson, trespassing, assault, vehicular assault, terrorism, pod sabotage, unsanctioned demolitions, disturbing the peace—”

“Yeah, that stuff. Piece of cake.” Mike grins.

Chuck gives a familiar, exasperated sigh and rolls over onto his side, facing away from him.

“Why do you do it?” he asks. “It can’t be for money, this place is a dump. And there’s only four of you—”

“Five.”

“— _four_ of you and your stupid dead boyfriend—”

“ _Chuck_.”

“—so it’s not like you could honestly believe you’re going to, to, I don’t know, take over Kane Co or something. You couldn’t. That’s crazy. So why do you keep coming up and attacking Deluxe?”

“Hey, Kane started it,” says Mike, and then realizes how absolutely juvenile that sounds and rushes on.  “Have you seriously never heard how he talks about this city?  There are _thousands_ of people living down here, and he wants to wipe out their home.  He has to be stopped.”

“He lets people come up to Deluxe,” Chuck says, like he’s explaining something to a little kid who doesn’t understand what he’s saying.  “He _wants_ people to come up to Deluxe.”

“People shouldn’t have to choose between Deluxe and Kane’s bots,” says Mike firmly.  “That’s not a choice.  This is their _home._ This is _our_ home.”

“This is a dirty, dangerous, gang-infested hole in the ground,” Chuck says, but Mike can’t quite read his tone.  There’s a tired blankness to the words, like he’s reciting it by rote.  “...and nothing you make me ‘remember’ is going to change that, dude.”

“Look, all I’m saying is—we’re just trying to be free, okay?  That’s what it’s _about,_ even Claire gets it. We don’t want to take over Deluxe, we just want freedom.”

“Oh jeez,” says Chuck, and for a second he sounds so genuinely impressed Mike’s heart rises.  Then Chuck goes on, “...I wonder what _that_ feels like,” and presses a pale hand to the bars on the door.

There’s nothing to say to that.  Mike turns away from the door, closes his screens and doesn’t say anything for the rest of his shift.

 

*

 

Nobody else has anything to report for the next couple shifts.  Mike tries to stay busy in between his turns by the cell door; tries to go out on patrols and keep an eye out for bots.  But his thoughts are stuck back at the base, in that dark hallway by the metal grating. It’s hard to focus on driving when he can feel the hole in the passenger’s seat where Chuck would usually be and hear the empty rushing of the wind over his windshield instead of Chuck yelling at him.  

“...does he have to take a turn?”  Chuck says when Mike comes back.  Texas snorts.  “No seriously, he never stops trying to sell me on your whole— touchy-feely freedom and friendship kind of commune thing you got going on down here.  I’d rather listen to you name all of your muscles than more of that brainwashing bullcrap.”

“Kay well Tiny ain’t washing no brains, he leaves those in people’s guts where they’re supposed to be,” Texas says firmly.  “But he totally doesn’t shut up about dumb friendship junk.  Texas feels you.”

“Gee, thanks,” says Mike, and trades friendly shoulder-punches with Texas on the way past.  “Jacob was cooking something edible, better go get on that before it’s all gone.”

Texas whoops and punches the air, then vanishes off toward the main hideout.  Mike kicks back against the wall and settles in for a long shift.  Never shuts up?  He can totally shut up.  Mike isn’t going to say a word. Mike slides down to sit against the wall, pulls up a screen and waits.

After fifteen quiet minutes, Chuck finally sighs and breaks the silence.

“Seriously though,” he says, quiet and resentful, “—if you were going to screw around in my brain, you should’ve picked better crap to throw in there.”

“Mm?”  Mike was playing one of the ancient games Chuck made for him, ages ago when he tried game-programming.  It’s crappy, but it’s something to hold onto and besides he is _so bored._ Sometimes he thinks about how Chuck must feel, locked up in this stupid, tiny room without even shift-changes to distract him—then he stops thinking about that.  “Huh?”

“I don’t know how you’re putting this stuff in my head, but you should make up better memories,” says Chuck, clearer this time.  “Zombies and—and _racing_?  And bugs that eat metal—I can’t drive, okay, you should have at least picked something I can _do._ ”

“Well, all of those totally happened,” Mike starts—Chuck snorts.  “—hey, I’m serious!  You won the race, you beat the Duke—”

“Yeah, and he’s _totally_ real,” Chuck says, heavy with sarcasm.  “That’s a super-convincing character you came up with.”

“Dude, I _wish_ I was making up the Duke,” Mike says fervently.  “Our lives are nuts down here, but that doesn’t mean the stuff you’re remembering is _fake_ , okay?”

“Yeah, right.”  Chuck sighs and picks up one of the books they got him. “And the time we made out in Mutt is _definitely_ for real, Mr I Don’t Have A Boyfriend So I’ll Brainwash One _Chilton_.”

“I— what? We _what_?”

Chuck taps his temple with a corner of the book. “You should know, you stuck it in there last night.”

“I’m not sticking anything anywhere!” Mike protests, then buries his face in his hands. “I mean. You know what I mean!”

“Well, so, maybe the old guy does it,” Chuck says. “Augh, that’s a lot worse to think about.”

“You seriously dreamed we— we made out? In Mutt?”

“I didn’t! If I was going to _dream_ about us making out, it’d be somewhere a lot better than some ancient death-trap car that smells like old pizza.”  

“Oh.” Mike feels as if his entire face might just spontaneously catch fire. “... _oh_.”

“Uh... yeah.” Chuck rubs the back of his neck, studies a painted golden rose very closely. “I mean, it wasn’t... ideal.”

“So... if you. Uh.” Mike coughs. “If you _did_ dream about. Us. Where would be... better?”

Chuck looks over at Mike, his eyes wide, his face going bright red.

“Well! Ahaha, uh. Not _here._ ”

Mike looks at his feet, his shoulders slumping tiredly. “Yeah,” he says. “Sorry.”

“Our pod,” Chuck says. Mike looks back up, but Chuck’s studying the flower again. “If I was dreaming, you wouldn’t be— this. You’d never have left Deluxe. You’d still be a cadet—”

“Chuck, I couldn’t—”

“—and you’d come home to me.”

Mike isn’t sure what his heart is doing. Trying to kill him, maybe. “Chuck,” he says helplessly, curling his fingers through the grating. “... _Chuckles_.”

“Let me out,” Chuck says, and puts his fingers through the same bars, lacing them over and through Mike’s. His skin’s so hot, and he leans in close. “Let me out and come home with me. You could cut a deal with Kane, he lets people come back, anyone can come back to Deluxe—”

“That’s not—”

“You’re _valuable_ , Mikey,” Chuck says, and it guts him. “You’re so important. You can come back anytime, stop being a Burner _any_ time. I think he’d be glad to have you. He’d welcome you back. And I would too, I really would, we could live together just like we used to, when we were kids, and everything was safe, and clean, and good.”

Mike chokes, tears blindly away from the door. He gets halfway down the hallway before remembering he can’t _go_ anywhere, he can’t leave Chuck alone, and he spins on his heel, beats his fists against the wall.

“I _can’t_ ,” he tells Chuck, and it comes out— wrong, ragged. He takes a shaking, awful breath in, out, punches the wall again. “Chuck, I can’t, we can’t, it’s not like that up there. It’s not real. It was never safe, or— or— they _hurt_ you, Chuck, they wanted _me_ to hurt people, it was _wrong_.”

“No one hurt me until _you,_ ” Chuck says, bitterly.

Mike takes another hot, shaking breath. “You told me, in— you were sorted into systems engineering, you were a programmer. You always had burns. When we were kids. Said it was just how the machines you worked with were, they sparked a lot. Later, down here, you said— they were punishments.”

“You made me remember that!” Chuck protests shrilly. “You put that in my head! I never programmed anything in my life!”

“Then _why do your arms look like that_?” Mike yells at him. His knuckles hurt, everything hurts. “ _They held you down and BURNED HOLES IN YOU!_ ” He clenches his teeth around an awful sob and turns away again. His nose is running and he wipes it roughly on his sleeve, struggling to breathe, struggling to control himself. He contacts Dutch.

“You need to cover my shift,” he says hoarsely.

“What’d he do to y—”

“ _Now_.”

He stands at the end of the hallway until Dutch shows up, looking worried, just trying to breathe steadily, and shoves past the other Burner as soon as he arrives, before he can say _anything_ and make it all _worse_. He throws himself into Mutt and drives, and drives, and the empty seat beside him feels a part of him that’s died.

 

*

 

“Hey, Tiny!”

Texas flicks the lights on after a long late-night shift.  Mike groans—Chuck wakes up with a startled little gasp, which is even worse than the way the lights cut into Mike’s eyes.  

“I’m up,” Texas informs them, unnecessarily, and holds out a hand to pull Mike bodily onto his feet.  “Oh and uh, there’s some guys outside the blast doors who wanna talk to you.”

“What?”  Mike frowns, considerably more awake.  “Who’s even got the location for this place?”

LARPers, apparently.  

“Where is he?” Ruby demands, before Mike can even say hi. “You’ve had him back for two weeks and you didn’t tell us? _Where is he?”_

“Hi, Darkslayer,” Mike says, and she elbows roughly past him. “Sure, come on in, it’s cool. Hi Thurman.”

Thurman gives him a hard look and hurries after Ruby.

“We had to hear from the Oracle that you guys rescued Lord Vanquisher! _The Oracle, Mike!_ Do you know what that feels like?”

“Bad?” Mike guesses.

“Awful!” Ruby finishes her circuit of the main garage. “So where are you keeping him?”

“Oh, uh. You know, he’s—”

“Ensorcelled,” says Thurman. “Yeah. Oracle told us.”

“Lord Vanquisher was spirited away by elvenfolk, and long did his brave Knight search ‘ere he found his Lord, but Vanquisher’s heart had been stolen from him by them and hidden in a stone, which was hidden in a fish, which was hidden in a pond, which was hidden in an endless dark wood. And the Lord no longer remembered his Knight, or loved him.” Darkslayer reels this off as if quoting from a script she doesn’t much like. “Says the Oracle.”

“Also you guys have him locked up because he keeps kicking your butts,” contributes Thurman.

“Lord Vanquisher is as gifted in the arts of the battlefield as he is in the arts of the mind,” Ruby says proudly.

“Yeah, he’s— he’s not too shabby,” Mike says, and rubs the back of his neck uncertainly. “If I take you to see him, you won’t try to let him out or anything, will you? He says... pretty much whatever he thinks might work.”

“If we let him out, he’s gonna go right back to Deluxe, right?” says Thurman.

“Yeah,” says Mike.

“Screw that,” says Thurman.

“We won’t let him go!” Ruby says, exasperated. “Jeez, Mike, didn’t you ever hear of Tam Lin?”

“Who?”

“I’ll forward you some copies. Come on, take us to Lord Vanquisher already!”

“Aw,” says Texas, when he sees them. “Nerds. This just got even _more_ boring.”

“You can take a walk, Big Guy, we’ll be fine,” Mike says, and hikes a thumb over his shoulder. Texas clears out immediately, not at all reluctant to let Mike pull a double shift like Julie or Dutch would be.

Chuck’s curled up on his cot, pillow over his head against the cell lights, when Mike taps on grating.

“Mikey—?” he asks, startled again. He sits up, eyes fixed on Mike, and moves his hand as if to push bangs back— he gives a shy, confused little smile, and Mike’s heart hammers painfully against his ribs.

Then Chuck sees Ruby and Thurman, each gone to one knee, fists over their hearts, and he smiles like a sunrise, huge and bright.

“My Lord Vanquisher,” Ruby says. “It has been many moons since last we met, and though I know memories of us, your loyal comrades, may have been stolen away—”

“Oh my god, Darkslayer?” Chuck says, jumping to his feet. He scrambles over to the cell door. “And Thurman the Magnificent! Oh, _wow!_ You guys are _real_?”

Ruby and Thurman grin at each other excitedly.

“Yes, my Lord,” she says. “You remember us?”

“Yeah, I mean— of course, I kept— I just didn’t know—” Chuck laughs with delight and pushes his hand up over his forehead, then through his short hair. “—I mean, _rise_ , comrades! My valiant, noble, _awesome_ friends. Oh, wow. You guys have to tell me _everything_. Did you complete the quest for the Silver Sybil? I remember Terrence the Foul wanted to run the quest up the Wailing River, but—”

“—it was a terrible idea? Yeah, he rammed a vote on it through the weekend after your abduction, six to five. It was a disaster. Thurman got eaten by Harpies.”

“ _You_ failed a will check and were lost to Sirens,” grumbles Thurman, adjusting his glasses. Ruby glares at him.

“Were they _comely_ Sirens?” Chuck grins.

“Fairer and more becoming than Thurman’s _Harpies!_ ” Ruby says defiantly, though she’s blushing.

Mike leans against the wall, arms folded, and watches them. He’s trying to be happy for how happy Chuck is, and feeling mostly just lost. They talk about places he can’t really imagine and monsters he’s never even heard of, and argue over completely impenetrable rules— or spells?— and Chuck _smiles_ , and laughs, stands there tall and broad-shouldered and confident, and has friends who aren’t Mike. He loves people who aren’t Mike.

“—do you remember being king?”  Ruby is asking—she’s holding up the pin, and Chuck stares at it with wide eyes, transfixed.  “Do you remember killing the dragon?”

“I slew a dragon?”  Chuck blinks, squeezes his eyes shut and rubs one temple with the heel of his hand.  “I...yeah!  Yeah, there was...a lance, right?  Was it cool?”

“It was _the coolest_ ,” Ruby says fervently.  “You saved Mike’s life!”

“Alright, then!”  Chuck doesn’t even flinch at the reminder, just brushes past it like it’s nothing.  “Did we lose the Royale?”

Thurman glances back at Mike, then at Chuck, then back again frowning slightly.  Mike shakes his head.

“Don’t you remember Lord Sm—”

“No,” Chuck says flatly, and Mike winces all over, and Thurman’s shoulders slump a little.

“...We lost the Royale, my Lord,” Thurman says.

Ruby gives a big sigh. “Fifty-six consecutive weekends, and then you went missing and we were routed in a single afternoon. They drove us clear out of the Glasswind Pass like _babies_. Like _elf babies_.”

“It sucked,” agrees Thurman.

Chuck’s smiling again. “I keep telling you guys, don’t let Terrence do _anything_.”

Just before Ruby and Thurman go, Chuck snags the the hem of Ruby’s cape with his fingertips.

“Hey,” he says, and leans in as far as he can, murmuring something.

Ruby shakes her head and pulls her cape firmly out of Chuck’s grasp.

“I know _you’ve_ heard of Tam Lin,” she says sharply.

Chuck, for some reason, looks right at Mike, and then he heaves a big sigh. “It’s not like that _at all_ ,” he says, but not like he expects to be believed.

Ruby shrugs, bows, and strides off down the hallway.

“We’ll come back Monday, my Lord,” she says. “And tell you how well your council on the Marauding Manticore was received.”

“Maybe we can set up a conference link,” says Thurman, rubbing his chin, then scurries after Darkslayer.

Mike looks at Chuck, the way he’s gone hunched and sad, how red and wet the rims of his eyes have gotten. He goes back to his cot and flops onto it facing the wall, breathing like he’s trying not to cry, or panic.

“They’re real,” Chuck says to the wall, and gives a high, shaky, terrible little giggle. “Oh, god. Some of that crap you guys put in my head was real.”

“Um,” Mike says. “Yeah.” He almost adds, _Sorry_ , but bites it back just in time. He’s not really sorry, he just hates seeing Chuck like this, shocked and lost.  

Instead, he asks, “So... Who’s Tam Lin?”

“ _An idiot_ ,” Chuck says, and pulls the pillow over his head.

 

*

 

He’s silent for a couple shifts after that, or at least tense and distant when Mike’s around, quiet enough that Mike’s _sure_ something’s really changed, they’re all turning some kind of corner. Why else would he be so stubbornly, defensively uncommunicative? It’s _got_ to be because he’s remembering more stuff than he wants to. He’s turning back into their Chuck, now matter how much he doesn’t like it.

But in the meantime he’s more distant than ever, and Mike misses him more than ever. He lingers out of sight of the door and hears Chuck talk to the other Burners, almost-friendly conversations about nothing much—then Mike comes around the corner and Chuck closes up.  

It sucks.  It sucks pretty hard.

But there are times when Chuck is almost himself again.  Those are the best and the worst, both at the same time.  When he’s falling asleep, and when he wakes up.  When he’s too bleary to rationalize away everything he’s remembering, to keep focused on how much he hates Mike’s guts, he’s almost normal. They talk about games, or movies, or commiserate on Jacob’s cooking— just small silly things, familiar things. And Chuck smiles a little. He looks at Mike like he knows they’re friends, for a few minutes at a time.

It makes everything worth it. Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does.

“I’ll take your shift tonight if you want,” Mike offers, and Dutch side-eyes him.  

“I don’t know why you’re torturing yourself like this, man.”

“I’m not!”  Mike can _hear_ the defensive guilt in his voice.  “I’m not.”

“This is tearing you up inside, Mike.”  Dutch’s voice is mild, but he doesn’t sound appeased.  “We can all tell.  I’m pretty sure sure _he_ can tell.”

“Look, we can trade if you want, I just...can I have tonight?”

Dutch watches him for another second, and then shrugs.  “...yeah.  Fine.  But if he starts playing those weird mind-games with you again—”

“He’s just trying to get home before— before he’s ours for good. This is just temporary, you know that—”

“Yeah I _know._ But if him ‘getting home’ means he starts saying stuff to hurt you on purpose, you _call us._  Don’t just sit there and take it.”

“Dude, he’ll probably just be asleep the whole time.”

“...Uh-huh.”  Dutch throws up his hands as Mike starts to open his mouth to argue.  “—No, okay, whatever you wanna do.  I’m just sayin’, Deluxe Chuck is _not_ your friend. You don’t owe it to him to sit there and let him mess with you.  That’s all.”

“He won’t.”

Dutch glares at him.

“ _I_ won’t,” Mike corrects himself, and Dutch sighs and waves him away.

That night, Chuck sleeps restlessly for an hour while Mike plays a racing game with the sound off.

Then, “Mike? Mikey!? MIKE, _NO_ —” Chuck screams, bolting off his cot. He staggers and leans against the wall, whimpering with terror. “Mike! Where _are_ you!?”

“I’m here,” Mike says urgently, pressed up against the grating. He rattles the door to catch Chuck’s attention.

“Oh, man,” Chuck whimpers, and throws himself against the bars, grabbing for Mike’s fingers. “Mike, are you okay? They didn’t— you’re still— they’re—”

“You were dreaming, man, it’s fine—”

“—cutting up your _head_ , Mikey, where are we—”

“—we’re in Motorcity, you’re safe, buddy, we’re both safe, it’s okay. Everything’s okay.”

Chuck heaves a huge sigh of relief, his fingers painfully tight on Mike’s. He’s shaking all over.

“Okay,” he repeats. “Okay, okay. We’re here? We’re really here? _You’re_ here?”

“I’m here, Chuckles. You can’t get rid of me.”

A wet laugh. “Yeah! Yeah... god, Mikey, there was this— they put you in a chair and— cut up your head and—took everything out—”

“Shh, no, man, that didn’t happen to me.”

“It happened. It happened.” Chuck shudders, sobs.  “You’re really here, right?”

“I’m here. We’re both here. It was just a dream, buddy.”

“It happened.”

“Shh. It’s okay, man. It’s okay. I’m here. I got you.”

Chuck whimpers, pressing flat against the grating. “Don’t go.”

“I’m not gonna.”

“Can you—” Chuck takes a shaking breath, swallows. “Can you come in? Can you come in here with me? Just for—like when we were kids. Just for tonight?”

“I don’t have the keys anymore,” Mike says miserably. “Not since...uh...”

“Oh.” Chuck gives a full-body cringe.

“I can stay _here_ though,” Mike says. “I’ll be right here, buddy.”

“Okay. I can... okay, that’s okay.” Chuck’s fingers tighten on Mike’s, then relax. He shuffles around a little, then sits on the floor and leans against the bars. He sticks his fingers back out through the grating, and Mike sits down immediately to catch them.

This close, he can feel the warmth of Chuck’s body, the puff of his unsteady breath. They’d shared a bed as lonely kids, and fell asleep curled up around each other on and off until they were probably eleven or twelve, when Chuck started to want to be tough like the other boys, and stopped crawling under the blankets with Mike after nightmares.

Mike can remember waking up from something bad when he was maybe twelve and reaching out for Chuck. His friend had only gone and gotten him a glass of water and put it in his hand instead, and Mike had been struck dumb with hurt.

“We’re not kids anymore,” Chuck had said, defiantly, in the dark. He already had a small collection of burns up his arms, livid red spots that wouldn’t fade to white for years. After that, they never held hands, and they didn’t hug much either, even though Chuck seemed to get more anxious and insecure by the week.

“Remember when we first came down here?” Mike murmurs. “We didn’t even know what winter was...”

Chuck gives a sleepy little huff of laughter. “Didn’t we spent a couple nights running curled up in that culvert?”

“Yeah, the one off sixty third. I think my butt’s still corrugated from it.”

“Haha, gross, Mikey. _Man_ , it was cold...”

“It’s spring here, now. It’s been about two years... In another month or so we can go swimming in the lake again. Remember the lake? Learning to swim? We could teach you how again if you don’t...”

Chuck’s asleep again. Mike thinks about the dark, warm, muggy air of Old Detroit’s summer, and the shock of black water closing over his head.

When he wakes up he’s still curled against the door, but Chuck’s sitting in the furthest corner, arms wrapped around his legs, chin tucked, surrounded by the torn-up remains of his blankets and books. His scabby knuckles have re-opened and there’s dark smears on the walls, across the painted ghosts.

“I hate you,” he says hoarsely, when he sees Mike looking. “I hate what you’re turning me into. _I HATE YOU!”_

Mike flinches away. “Chuck,” he says, helplessly.

Chuck charges the door, slamming it with his palms so hard it _rings_. “ _I HATE YOU I HATE YOU MIKEY I’M GONNA KILL YOU IF YOU DON’T LET ME GO I HATE YOU!”_

Mike turns and runs.

 

*

 

Dutch finds him sitting on Mutt’s hood, elbows on knees, fingers laced tightly together, heart shattered, staring at nothing.

“We can take you off the watch schedule, man,” he says.

“No,” Mike says.

“ _Mike_ ,” Dutch snaps.

“ _THIS IS TEMPORARY,”_ Mike screams at him. Dutch takes a sharp step back, chin rising, eyes flashing with anger.

“I don’t think it is, man,” Dutch says, every word very clear and slow. “I think you are doing yourself permanent damage, letting him hurt you like this.”

“You guys don’t need to keep trying to _protect_ me from him!” Mike growls. “I can _TAKE IT._ ”

Dutch steps forward and shoves him, hard. “You think you deserve it, don’t you? That’s your big issue, isn’t it? You _want_ him to punish you.”

Mike, sprawled back on Mutt’s hood, turns his face very deliberately away from Dutch, his hands pressing flat against the smooth metal. There’s a long, hot silence, and then Dutch sighs and sits down on the hood beside him.

“We all failed him, Mike,” Dutch says. “You don’t get to hog all the guilt for yourself.”

“He was _my_ best friend.” Mike says.

“Screw you. I liked him too. He taught me how to program— you know Julie doesn’t have the patience for that kind of thing. And like, also, I think she’s self-taught? I asked her to debug this ion cannon I was working on once and found the whole code re-written in like, _martian_ , and she got so mad that I wasn’t grateful about it. I had to scrap the project. But Chuck just sat around with me the first couple months I was a Burner until I could read and write every piece of equipment my ride was packing.”

“I remember that,” Mike says quietly. His throat aches, and his eyes sting, but... yeah, he remembers that, working with Texas to bolt together Whiptail’s sweet silver-white curves while Dutch and Chuck sat on a balloon tire, heads bent together over purple and green screens. He remembers getting used to the way Dutch laughed and waved his arms and paced excitedly around the room and left drawings in his wake like some kids left footprints. And he remembers the way Chuck had lit up, hanging out with him, getting to know him, making a new friend.

“He liked you so much,” Mike says. “He—he liked all of us. He was a good friend.”

“And he’ll be our friend again,” Dutch says, and pats Mike’s shoulder. “So _until then_ , how about you don’t let that Deluxe jerk treat you like his own personal punching bag?”

Mike takes a deep breath in, lets it out. “Okay,” he says. “Yeah, okay.”      

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Again they'll turn me in your arms_   
>  _To a red hot brand of iron,_   
>  _But hold me fast, and fear me not,_   
>  _I'll do you no harm."_   
>  [—Tam Lin, Child 39A](http://tam-lin.org/versions/39A.html)
> 
> _"I will wax in your two hands_  
>  _As hot as any coal;_  
>  _But if you love me as you say,_  
>  _You'll think of me and thole."_  
> [—Tam Lin, Child Notes (Fragments and Variants)](http://tam-lin.org/versions/notes.html)
> 
> _"I'II grow into your arms two_  
>  _Then like iron in strong fire;_  
>  _But hold me fast, let me not go,_  
>  _Then you'll have your desire."_  
> [—Tam Lin, Child 32D](http://tam-lin.org/versions/39D.html)


	3. Chapter 3

 

Chuck and Jacob are arguing quietly about something, when Mike comes down the hallway. His head’s buzzing with the comedown of a long, hard fight, made all the harder without proper tech support, and he’s exhausted down to his bones. Kane’s been throwing everything he’s got and then some at Motorcity the last couple days, testing for weakness and _finding_ it.

But Mike still smiles when Chuck looks up at him, though it pulls at the tight, blistering patches of his burns. He’s okay. Kane’s latest batch of bad guys has been sent running back up to Deluxe with their tails between their legs, and Chuck is still here, and okay. This is all going to be okay.

“Whoa!” Chuck says, sounding worried.

“Hey,” Mike says. “S’okay.”

Jacob heaves himself to his feet, cracks out his back, and catches Mike around the ribs.

“Hey, kiddo,” he says. “You don’t look so hot.”

“M’fine,” Mike says. “Texas needs... uh.” He waves a hand. “C’n you...”

“Alright, sure, let’s—”

“No, I gotta... someone’s gotta watch Chuck...”

“He’ll be fine for a minute. Let’s get you sitting down.”

“I c’nsit,” Mike says, and demonstrates on Jacob’s stool. It creaks underneath him and his shoulder hits the door grating hard. He’s tired. Kind of dizzy.

“Mike _Chilton_ ,” Jacob says, exasperated.

“Texas,” Mike says, and points down the hallway. “S’got. A thing.”

“Alright, alright, but I’m coming right back for you, you crazy kid,” Jacob says, and ruffles his hair. Mike mumbles something agreeable, and then it’s quiet, and warm.

“Mike...?” Chuck asks. He sounds all wrong, scared but _quiet._ Fingers brush the shoulder of his jacket, and Mike curls closer.

“Miss you, buddy,” he sighs.

Chuck stops touching him, and retreats all the way to the furthest corner. But it’s okay. It’s okay. Mike will just sit right here and watch him. He’s safe here. He’s okay.

Just before Mike loses his grip on consciousness, he thinks he hears Chuck whisper, so quietly, “ _I miss you too_.”

 

*

 

No one actually knows how Chuck gets loose, this time. Texas thought Julie was watching him. Julie thought Dutch had it. Dutch was off on a date with Tennie, confident that Texas had everything on lock, and wasn’t happy about having to bail on her. Jacob was found locked in his Sasquatch’s trunk with Roth.

“Hailing the Duke of Detroit,” Chuck’s voice says, blurry and indistinct over the crude audio feed that’s all Dutch can manage to tap through Chuck’s locked-tight com-line.

“Duke of Detroit, are you there? This is Chuck of the Burners, hailing you from Chilton’s vehicle Mutt—”

A burst of static, rough engine noise. The faint thread of the Duke’s reply.

“I have a deal for you,” Chuck says. “I’ve got control of Mutt and I’m headed for the southside Deluxe access pipe—”

More noise, an interruption.

“—No, not a rescue, an _escort_ , I need an escort, I’m getting out of here and need help keeping the Burners off me. Give me an escort up to Deluxe and I’ll give you Mutt.”

“What?” Julie blurts out.

“No way!” Dutch says.

“Can he do that?” Texas asks, looking over at Mike.

“Not if we stop him,” he says.

“But—”

“Ssh!” He waves Texas quiet. Chuck’s talking again, saying:

“—no fatalities,” in a voice as stern and commanding as any Lord Vanquisher’s ever used. “You hear me, Duke? No ducking out on what you owe Chilton with a convenient _crash_ or a stray _shot_ or _anything_.”

Burst of noise again. Mike’s heart has climbed up his throat and grown spikes, big tire-punching spikes, he doesn’t know what to think.

“— _know_ they’re a pain in the neck, I got REALLY FAMILIAR WITH— _AhhahaHA, AAH—”_

“Dutch!” Mike snaps. “Don’t run him off the road, we’re too high up!”

“I saw the shot and I took it, man,” Dutch says defensively.  “Not my fault he overcorrected like that!”

“— _hah, ahahah, okay, I— I’m—_ Duke, I mean it, I don’t care, if you hurt any of them the deal’s off. Just peel them off my tail, would you?”

Reply, crackling, the barest hint of the Duke’s laughter.

“Great. Okay. Okay. Great. Thanks.”

Chuck takes a hard left, spins across crumbling old dividers to take an off-ramp they’d just all roared past. He jinks right past Julie, whining shrilly as she tries to get a tow cable on him, and plunges down the off-ramp at a really respectable fraction of Mutt’s top speed. Mike is really, really starting to regret pushing him to learn to drive. Whiptail corners on a dime and Ninelives isn’t bad at a controlled spin, but Stronghorn’s a sturdy, ramming build and by the time Texas gets them turned around the other three are far ahead. Texas grunts in frustration.

Mutt’s guidance system might not be as fine as what Whiptail’s dozens of gyroscopes yield, its positioning system not as meticulous as what Nine Lives needs for its holograms, but it’s got Chuck behind the wheel, brilliant and reckless with terror, and he’s _flying_. They’re all on a tangle of old elevated highways, crumbling and half-collapsed in places, soaring in concrete ribbons a dozen stories high in others, and it’s just about the best possible place to stall for time Chuck could have led them to.

 _Yeah, of course you have to take control of the battlefield,_ Chuck had told Ruby, laughing, casual, leaned against the cell door. _We can do a fighting retreat back up the mountains, then close in on the high passes, where the shale’s loose— they rely way too much on their Centaurs, it’ll be a massacre..._

On such rough, looping, narrow roads, they can’t get in close enough as a group to pin Chuck down anywhere.

“He’s turning, ramp us over the side!” Mike orders.

“Hey, no backseat driving,” Texas protests.

“Do it!”

Texas growls but sends Stronghorn plunging off one road and onto another, two stories further down, then spins them and races up towards where Chuck’s looping down an exit ramp, trying to stop him head-on. For a heartstopping moment it looks like Texas might just ram Mutt point-blank, and Mike shouts with alarm.

Then the Duke’s drivers arrive, ten lean gunmetal-grey armored stretch limos, closing in around Mutt’s bright green body like fists. One limo plows straight into Stronghorn’s side, hardly making a dent but sending them into a terrible sideways skid. Stronghorn punches through the highway guardrail and then teeters, a back wheel hanging out over a ten storey drop, the other tires briefly struggling for traction on crumbling, dusty rubble. Mike tries to grab for the wheel on reflex and Texas swats him away.

“Cut it out, Tiny!” he snaps. “I got this! You’re a passenger, so like, do that already! Passengize!”

He switches gears, throws his own weight forward, heaves Stronghorn off the edge. They roar off, Mike’s heart hammering in his ears, his fingers buzzing with the frantic desire to _do_ something, _anything._

Then, abruptly, he realizes what he can do.

“Stay close,” he orders Texas— who scoffs at him—and then brings up his comms. Gritting his teeth, he signals the Duke.

“Hey, it’s m—”

“Mikey boy! I hear there’s a little _trouble_ in paradise at the moment—”

“I’m calling in that favor you owe me.”

“Ohhh?”

“Stop him. Give him back to us. And we’re square.”

“A little light on pleasantries today, aren’t you, Chilton?”

“I’m kinda strapped for time, here, Duke. Are we or _aren’t we_ gonna have a problem?”

“Hhhhhm- _mmm_. I’ll get back to you on that. _Duke out!_ ”

The Duke’s signal blinks out and Mike can’t get back in contact, no matter what he tries. The Burners and Chuck and the Duke’s men all reach the edge of the tangle of highways and level out into a six-lane freeway, the limos around Mutt in a solid ring. Mike can hear Chuck start to catch his breath, over the audio feed, half-swallowed whimpers and screams winding down into a steady gasping as he starts to realize he’s safe from them.

“They’re going southwest,” Julie points out.

“Is that good?” demands Dutch.

“If they turn further south they’ll be heading for the Duke’s territory!”

“Is _that_ good?”

“We’re only ten minutes from the west pipe up to Deluxe at this speed, so yeah,” Mike says.

“Can we block them from the turn off?” Julie wants to know.

Texas launches Stronghorn forward, seeing if he can shove past the cordon of limos. Way too many women with way too many guns lean out the side windows and open fire right at the windshield, and none of the vehicles give an inch of ground. Texas growls in frustration and drops back again.

“Don’t hurt them!” Chuck screams. “Stop shooting!”

“I’m fine,” Texas protests. He futilely tries to address Chuck’s comm. “It’d take more than a few wimpy little _girl_ bullets to take Big Texas out of action!”

Chuck’s icon pops up in front of Texas, so bright and sudden he and Mike both blink at it in surprise.

“Hey, bro, is Mike riding with you?” the chatbox asks casually.

“Uh, yeah, I got him right here, Skinny,” Texas says.

“Cool, thanks.”

Every single system in Stronghorn goes dead. Chuck’s icon blinks out. The car coasts slowly to a stop, everyone else blazing past them and out of sight in an instant.

“...wow,” says Mike.

“He can’t do that!” Texas says indignantly. “He made like we were friends and then turned off my car! That ain’t right!”

“Dutch! Julie!”  Jeez, at least Mike’s personal comms still work.  He wouldn’t have been surprised if Chuck found a way to shut those down too, if he wasn’t so distracted right now.  “Chuck turned Stronghorn off somehow! You guys still running?!”

Dutch responds immediately. “He’s trying to get into my system but I’ve been working on encrypting every program and its _mother_ in here. It’ll take him a while.”

“I’m good,” Julie says. “A little insulted, but good. He hasn’t touched me yet.”

Dutch says, “Texas, man, I _told_ you to change your passwords.”

Texas crosses his arms defensively. “Texas was too busy not being a _geek_.”

“Okay, enough,” says Mike, thinking hard. “Julie, try to keep Chuck distracted with holograms, _they’ll_ be able to get through the cordon. Shake him up. Dutch, see if you can make the road ahead of them rougher with your sonic cannons. Stall them. We’ll try to get Stronghorn running again and catch up. Tell me if they turn off west.”

“On it!” Julie says.

“Got it,” Dutch agrees.

Texas and Mike sit in the silent car for a moment, looking at the blacked-out displays.

“Do I turn it on and then off again?” Texas wonders. He turns his key in the ignition and nothing happens.

“Let’s look under the hood,” Mike suggests. He knows what to do with what’s under a hood. It’s what’s under a dashboard that gets him a little lost.

They change the spark plugs, for lack of any better idea, and it actually works. Stronghorn roars to life accompanied by a lot of cheering and back-slapping, and they pile back into the front seats.

“How’re we doing, guys?” he asks Dutch and Julie.

“Get to the Duke’s mansion, _now_ ,” Dutch says. “They turned south!”

“Floor it!” Mike tells Texas, who elbows him.

“No backseat driving!” he complains again, but stomps the accelerator hard. They’re at the Duke’s mansion in barely three minutes, with Texas choosing a viciously direct overland route that tears chunks out of old buildings and carves new streets. Ordinarily Mike would worry about property damage, but right now he’s used up all his worry on Chuck.

Who is, when they screech to a stop in the Duke’s junkyard, just being ripped out of Mutt by two of the Duke’s minions. A third is holding a gun to his head but he’s still struggling, still the same frantic bundle of elbows and teeth Mike’s been contending with the last couple weeks. 

The Duke is strolling, fairly casually, down the walk from his mansion. Cyborg Dan trots behind him holding a spotlight on a pole. Just as he comes to a stop, Chuck is shoved to his knees at the Duke’s polished gators, with humiliatingly perfect timing.

“Well, well—” starts the Duke.

“We had a _deal!_ ”  Chuck cuts over him, his voice high with fear, hoarse with fury.  “I thought you wanted Mutt!”

“That beautiful lady will come my way when she’s _good_ and ready,” says the Duke, although he does throw a longing kind of glance in Mutt’s direction, shoulders momentarily slumping,  “—and you said it yourself, I got... _debts_ to pay.”  He sighs dramatically, head flopping back, as if to invite them all to appreciate how tragically indebted he is.  

“You _stabbed me in the back._ ”

“That’s how it goes,” says the Duke, and leans down, smiling a gloating, too-wide smile.  “It’s only business, ba—”

He leans too close. Chuck’s heels scratch on the junkyard dirt and he _launches_ up, his forehead crunching solidly into the bridge of the Duke’s nose. The man’s head snaps back and blood spatters across Chuck’s face, through his hair.

“You little—!” The Duke staggers, then raises his cane, the jewel on the end glittering heavy and sharp, and Mike’s reached them by then. He catches the Duke’s arm and _squeezes_ , savoring the man's indignant gasp.

“We’re square,” he growls. “Duke. _We’re even.”_ He spins them when the Duke struggles against him, till he’s between Chuck and that raised cane. There’s a crackle of pistols being cocked and charged and aimed at his back, but he doesn’t care enough to look back or put his hands up.

“ _Duke_ ,” he says.

The Duke pulls back, and Mike lets him. He touches fingers to his fountaining nose, hefts his cane, and decks Mike across the face with the jewel, _hard_. It drives him to one knee—

“ _Mikey!”_ Chuck yelps _._

 _—_ and he gets up again, slow and careful. His face is hot, his cheek throbbing, his jaw wet. Gashed, maybe. Nothing he won’t heal from.

“We’re square,” Mike repeats, with a little more difficulty this time.

“I want to hit him too,” Cyborg Dan says.

“ _Duke_ ,” Mike presses.

The Duke’s got a bright white handkerchief to his nose now. He gives Mike a filthy, furious glare.

“We’re quits, Chilton,” he agrees. He spins his cane, twirls it over the back of his wrist, snaps with his free fingers, catches it. His men and women form up around him, crisp and dark, and Chuck is dumped unceremoniously in the dirt.

Mike looks down at him and he looks up for a long, still moment. His mouth is a small uncertain shape, his eyes wide, his skin very pale against the vivid streak of the Duke’s blood.

Then Mike holds his hand out to help Chuck up: he rolls over whip-fast and tries to run for it.

The other Burners catch him, get his wrists with tape, and dump him in the cramped but lockable backseat of Nine Lives.

It’s a grim, quiet ride back to hideout. Mike’s glad to get his hands back on Mutt’s steering-wheel, but it’s not the whooping, racing, joyous reunion of the last couple times he’s saved her from the Duke’s attention. The passenger side’s still empty, still silent, still _wrong_.

Chuck lets Mike pull him out of Julie’s back seat.  He reaches out with bound hands, for just a second, like he’s going to touch Mike’s bloody cheek.  Then his eyes slide away, his hands drop, his shoulders slump into a familiar defeated, exhausted slouch.

“Thanks for telling him not to hurt us,” says Mike. “It was pretty cool of you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Chuck sighs, and he sounds so much like himself that Mike aches to clap him on the back, to sling an arm around his shoulder. He hunches up and gives Mike a sharp look, though, as soon as Mike shifts his weight.

“ _No_ ,” he snaps.

“Wasn’t gonna,” Mike says, holding up his hands. “Uh... I still gotta take you back to your, uh. Room.”

“Jail cell.”

“...Yeah.”

Chuck looks at him a moment more, eyes tracing Mike’s face, his cheek. Mike rubs it, awkwardly, then winces as the rough movement sends a fresh throb of pain through his jaw.

“I’ll go with Julie,” Chuck says. “You go get that cleaned up before it gets infected.”

“Okay!” Mike says, completely shocked. “I— you— are you— I mean, okay! Sure!” He’s grinning, even though it just makes the gash hurt worse. Chuck won’t meet his eyes again, though, just trudges over to stand by Julie, who draws her boomerang on him suspiciously, and Mike stands there until they’re both out of sight, still smiling helplessly.  

Dutch finally pulls him off to the recovery room with a fist in the collar of his jacket.

 

*

 

Mike gets his face cleaned out, glued shut, and bandaged up, then has a shower. In the bathroom mirror he looks really tired, the kind of tired you get after months of too much fighting and not enough fun, but he also looks kind of happy. He feels kind of happy.  

Instead of going to bed like he knows he should, he goes to check in on Chuck. He’ll go to sleep _right_ afterwards, he figures. Once he knows Chuck is really here with them again.

Only— he’s with Julie right now, and they’re snapping at each other. Mike hesitates at the end of the hallway, then presses against the darker part of the wall, biting his lip.

Julie’s saying, “You know this is tearing him up, right? This is _killing him_ , Chuck.”

“I know! I know, I know, Julie, _I know, OKAY?”_ Chuck shouts, his voice tight with stress.

“Okay,” she growls.

“Okay!”

There’s a single sharply-swallowed sob, and a long, long silence after that.  Mike stays where he is, half-hidden in the shadows, listening so hard his ears ring.

“I can’t be who you want,” Chuck finally says, sounding absolutely miserable.  “I can’t.”

“It’s not about what we want to be, it’s about we have to be,” says Julie.  “I know it’s...scary.  Finding out this wild, crazy, dangerous life is where we really belong—”

“I _don’t_ ,” Chuck says.

“Don’t, or don’t _want_ to?”

Silence.  

“Can you look me in the eyes and tell me you still believe you’ll fit back in up there? That you _ever_ really did?”

The silence stretches out.  Julie doesn’t seem inclined to fill it—Mike can’t hear anybody moving, can barely make out, every so often, the soft sound of somebody breathing.  

“...I’ll fit,” Chuck says, eventually. “I’ll go back and I’ll fit and I’ll like it. And I won’t ever have to be in a car, or get shot at, or— or _fight_ with you guys—ever. Ever again. When I get back home this is all going to be _over_ , Julie.”

“You’re home _now_ , Chuck. You go back up to Deluxe and all you’ll find is the empty box you thought was a real life until you came down _here_ and understood how much _more_ there was to living. If Kane doesn’t just throw you right off the tower this time!”

“You’re wrong. He—”

“I _know_ Kane,” Julie says, and Mike thinks about the look in Kane’s eyes, in sunset light high over Deluxe. “I work with him all the time. You know how much information I get for you guys. You know how accurate it is. I _know_ him.”

“Well I’m not just going to walk right up to the guy and say _hello!_ ”

“It doesn’t matter!  He knows who you are, and he knows _what_ you are.”  Julie lets out a short laugh that hardly sounds like a laugh at all.  “' _Burner scum’_.  He’ll start hunting you down the second you step foot in Deluxe and believe me, he won’t stop until he finds you!”

“Oh yeah? _How!_ ”

A long sigh. “I don’t know, does it matter?  Cameras. Computer feeds, fingerprint codes. He probably implanted you while you were up there, he’s got those new subdermal bugs he’s rolling out, and--and who knows what else!  I’m just saying, he’ll find you.  He _will_ find you.”

“...Subdermal?”

“Yeah. Gross, huh?”

“Haha, ahhh... yeah. That’s nasty. Where are they, can you cut them out?”

“Inside of the elbow, and... maybe? I couldn’t just get rid of mine, I had to set up a relay with a cloned device so Kane wouldn’t ever see my signal heading down towards Old Detroit and then disappearing, it was such a headache. And don’t get any smart ideas either, you know all the barriers between Deluxe and Motorcity short out like 99-point-whatever of through signals. Any Kane tech down here’s pretty much dead to anyone up there.”

“Yeah, Julie, you caught me,” Chuck says wryly. “I’ve spent this whole time sitting on my butt, waiting for the cavalry.”

Julie snorts. “Well, you could _start._ My knuckles and I would appreciate the break.”

“Pffha.”

“Seriously, do you know how hard it is to keep concealer on your _hands_ all day? And hologlamor wears off even faster, you scroll your _newsfeed_ too hard and it shorts out. Next time you want me to beat your face in, give me a minute to grab some boxing gloves first, okay?”

“No promises,” Chuck says, but his voice is warm with laughter.  

Mike takes a deep breath in, lets it out, and walks quietly off to bed.

 

*

 

He goes over Mutt the next day with Dutch and Texas, inch by inch, but she’s fine, hardly a ding or scratch from her little adventure with Chuck. She’s actually in way better shape than how _Mike_ usually drives her back. Dutch reports her dashboard systems have all been accessed but not tampered with, and definitely not sabotaged. She’s safe and clean.

Mike helps Texas pop dents out of Stronghorn and levers grit out of the folding mechanisms of her battering ram, then washes the outside of Nine Lives while Dutch sits in Whiptail and fusses with his programs, because Julie’s not there and it seems unfair for her car not to be getting any attention. He’s busy vacuuming the weird pink fur of her driver’s seat when someone squishes the wet, dirty sponge from the wash bucket right between his shoulderblades.

“PbfghAUGH!” he squawks, jerking backwards before the water can get inside Julie’s car, and whirls around to catch—Julie! It’s Julie, okay—Julie’s arm. Laughing, she tosses the wet sponge from her caught hand to her free hand in one easy motion, then smacks it into his stomach.

“Oh, come on!” he protests. “Is that any way to thank a guy who washed your car!?”

“I’m washing _you_ ,” she says, “I’m helping!” and gets him in the chin with the sponge. Sputtering, he spins her around and pulls one of her heels out from under her, tipping her into Nine Lives driver’s seat and slamming the door fast.

“Oh, come on!” she yells, and thumps a fist against the window. Mike flips the nearly-dry sponge from one hand to the other and back again, laughing, and dunks it back in the washbucket.

“Hey, Texas, gimme a hug!” Mike calls, striding towards him fast. Texas takes one look at the wet, brown patches all over Mike’s shirt and the one hand Mike’s got hidden behind his back, and he strikes a wary muai tai pose.

“Uh-uh, Tiny, Texas wants to table gross displays of physical affection ‘till you’re not all nasty.”

“Too bad!” Mike jumps him, grabs on hard, and squeezes the sopping wet sponge down the back of Texas’s jumpsuit. Texas screams, peels Mike off, and bowls him across the floor. When Mike tries to roll to his feet, Julie’s there, fizzing unexpectedly into view, and she knocks him flat.

Then she upends the wash bucket over his face.

“I win!” she announces. When Mike rolls over to try and cough out the gunk that got up his nose, she puts her foot on his butt and strikes a heroic pose.

“I think _I_ win,” Dutch remarks, leaning out of Whiptail and surveying the mess.

Mike hacks up the last of the washwater, and struggles up to his hands and knees, slipping a little in the gritty puddle. His white shirt’s gone grey-brown with gross water and his arms are slathered in muck. He looks up over his shoulder at Julie. Her mouth is twitching. They look at Texas.

Texas cracks his neck, ominously.

They all look at Dutch.

“Oh, no,” Dutch says. “ _Nononono!”_ He ducks back inside Whiptail, but isn’t fast enough to engage the locks. Texas pushes and Julie pulls, and they pry him out, his long legs and arms all flailing, then hold him steady while Mike strolls over.

“Hey there, _friend_ ,” Mike grins, and hugs him. He nuzzles Dutch’s chest a little, too.

“You guys suck,” Dutch says grimly. “I’m going back to Deluxe.”

The joke falls flat, and the big muddy smear Mike’s left all over Dutch’s shirt isn’t as funny as it was a second ago.

Dutch winces, brings up a hand to rub the back of his neck.

“Uh, jeez, I didn’t—”

“Pizza,” Mike says. It’s the first thing he can think of. “Let’s go to Antonio’s today. We can bribe you, right?” He grins hopefully.

Dutch laughs a little too loudly, relieved. “Yeah! Yeah, man, buy my affection. I’m thinkin’... chicken and onion.”

“Peppers,” Texas contributes. “ _Ghost_ peppers.”

“I want pineapple and ham,” Julie says, “We never get what _I—”_ and the sane members of the Burners all make emphatic barfing noises at her until she kicks Texas in the shin.

“I’m gonna get some dry things and ask Chuck what he wants,” Mike decides, patting his soggy shirt.

“Uh,” says Dutch, looking sort of concerned, and Mike rolls his eyes.

“We’ll bring some back for him,” Mike says. “I’m not gonna invite him _along_ or anything, come on.”

“Way things’ve been going lately, he’ll beat us there,” Dutch mutters. Julie kicks his shin too. “Hey!”

Mike gives them a vague wave and heads off.

Chuck’s sitting in his cell alone.  Ruby brought him some old journals and fantasy maps, and they’re spread out all around him. He’s drawing arrows on some kind of topography map with crayons, and when he looks up at Mike, opening his mouth like he’s about to say something, his eyes go wide and he makes a breathy, gasping kind of squeak instead.  

“Hey, where’s Jacob?” Mike asks, frowning.

“Uh. Ahaha... what?” Chuck asks, and runs a big hand awkwardly through his short hair.

“Jacob. Wasn’t he watching you?”

“Old person... bathroom problems,” Chuck says, distractedly. “He’ll be back soon. What, uh. What...’s up?”

Mike realizes that Chuck is staring at his wet shirt with the kind of rapt, breathless fixation he normally only ever has for _Claire_ , and feels his ears heat up. He plucks at the wet fabric once or twice, trying to get it to stop clinging, and then just crosses his arms over his chest, suddenly self-conscious.

“Me’n the guys are going to Antonio’s,” he says. “I was wondering what kind of pizza you’d like us to bring back for you.”

“Okay,” says Chuck, absently.

“What?”

“What?”

“Chuck.”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of pizza do you want.”

“Uhhh.... _ha_ , okay, _pizza_ , right! Just my usual’s fine. You know what I... uh, what I like.”

They stare at each other for a moment. Chuck’s gone very pink, and keeps trying to run a hand through the bangs he doesn’t have anymore. Mike’s pretty sure his own face has turned red, too. The hallway is a lot warmer than he remembers it being before.

“Yeah,” he finally says. “I guess, uh, I guess I do.”

Chuck licks his lips, fusses with his hair again, looks away. Looks right back. He doesn’t seem inclined to contribute anything else to the conversation, so Mike forces himself to take a step backwards, then another.

“Maybe next time you can come with us,” he blurts out, before he can think about it. Because— he wants it, so badly, Chuck by his side in the car, in the restaurant booth, bumping elbows, all of them friends again— Mike could put his arm around Chuck’s shoulders while they ate, he could— kiss him and it’d taste like garlic and ghost peppers, like Chuck was part of his life again, like they fit together again—

It’s the wrong thing to say. Chuck’s dazed, hungry expression drops right off his face, and his hands clench around his knees. The anger in his eyes puts more distance between them than the cell door.

“Chuck...” Mike says, and he turns away sharply, spinning all the way around so his back is to Mike.

“ _No_ ,” he says. “Forget it.”

“Hey, come on. I just—”

“ _Forget it. GO AWAY_.”

Mike goes away, and changes his shirt, and dries his hair, and puts on his jacket. When he slouches off towards Mutt he finds the other Burners sitting around waiting for them, and he can’t really manage to look any of them in the face. He can hear Dutch sigh, though, exasperated, and Julie murmur something, and he’s briefly _furious_ that they keep _treating_ him like this, like _he’s_ the guy who got his brain messed up.

“Okay, can we go? Are we going?” Texas demands.  

“Yeah,” he says tightly, and throws himself into Mutt’s driver’s seat. “Race you there.”

 

*

 

They get an extra large pizza with everything to split at the table, and a small with Chuck’s favorite toppings to go. Even without him, it’s still good to be out. The last couple months have been rough, a series of frustrating half-victories and fighting retreats that cover civilian evacuations more often than save them their homes and businesses. None of the Burners have felt like treating themselves much.

But it feels like— with this last thing with the Duke, it feels like they’re turning a corner. Mike’s sure it’s not just him, that everyone else must be feeling this, even if they’re mostly just giving each other crap about favorite movies. They’re not going to be down a Burner for much longer. He’s _sure_.

Then Jacob calls them, _right_ after they get their pizza. “Kids, you better get back here.”

Everyone groans in exasperation. Dutch grabs a slice and stuffs the whole thing in his mouth.  

“What’d Crazy Bones do now,” Texas wants to know.

“Blew the garage up,” Dutch guesses, mouth full.

“Joined the Amazons,” Julie suggests, grabbing her own slice.

“Turned into a wolfman, _and_ blew the garage up, _and_ joined the— wait, no, aren’t the Amazons all chicks?”

“He contacted Kane somehow,” Jacob cuts in, and they all fall silent. “We’re surrounded.”

They race for the cars. Dutch sees Mike carrying Chuck’s take-home box under his arm, and goes “ _REALLY?”_

“I’m gonna eat it _in front of him_ ,” Mike growls. “Come on, floor it!”

The space around Jacob’s place is a storm of enforcer drones, ultra-elites, and big scary killbots with tearing claws that are trying to rip the plating off the locked-down base. Jacob’s got one of the bulletproof glass windows on the third floor cracked open, and is taking surgical potshots at the ultra-elites, which doesn’t bode well for how easily those big killbots are going to go down.

“We’ve gotta get in there,” Mike says, punching all the buttons to bring his guns and rockets up. He throws everything he’s got at the big bots and charges them alongside Texas, leaving Whiptail and Julie to handle the flying bots.

Three out of six bots go down, and the flying ones drop steadily. Then— he doesn’t see what happens— there’s a flash of blue light and Texas screams in shock and pain.

“Texas! What’s—” another flash of blue light and his world blanks out. He comes to in the middle of being dragged out of Mutt by ultra-elites, his body still jerking and convulsing, a hot wetness spilling down his chin. He tries to lash out but his arms don’t listen to him, and everything’s a blurry, spinning mess.

“Whhuh,” he mumbles, totally lost. It feels like he’s been hit with Dutch’s omnitool, if the thing was the size of a pod.

“ _Mike!”_

Julie. That was— that was Julie. He twitches and tries to focus. Things are buzzing, things get pressed to his head. He sags gratefully to his knees when they let him. Julie’s— out of her— Julie’s gotten out of her car, hands up. There’s stuff in his face. Guns. He’s being. They’re using him for. Hostage.

“Julie,” he slurs, mouth numb, dripping blood and spit. “Guys, nnnnh, nno...”

He summons up all his willpower, all his strength, and shoves backwards. It’s unexpected enough that he twists free from one Elite’s grasp, brings his fist up to punch the other guy solidly in the face. He catches a boot in his side and a gun goes off, incredibly loud, incredibly close, and his shoulder _burns_. He can smell the stink of where his jacket’s gotten fried. Energy weapon, though, not bullets, no tearing holes, he’ll be fine. He gains his feet, trips a guy, stomps his ribs, gets shot again, right in the back. _Burns_. Ha. Burns for a Burner.

He strips his jacket off, wishing desperately for his staff, and whips it across the face of another Ultra Elite. If he could get inside— if they could all get inside—

“Mike! This way!” Dutch shouts. Jacob must have popped one of the hatches, because Dutch and Julie are holding it against the mob of Elites, and Mike can’t see— no, there he is, there’s Texas, struggling to get through as well, looking about as wrecked as Mike feels.

He makes it, but Texas goes under. He tries to go back for Texas but Dutch grabs him. Julie goes and knocks out the two guys trying to cuff him, then hauls him back, bent double under his weight and looking terrifyingly small.

“Don’t let them—” shouts an Elite, before Mike hammers his jaw with an elbow. Then they’re all inside, spilling down the hallway, fighting as they go, five— eight, at least eight— Elites all over them. The energy guns sizzle in these close quarters, baking the air, heating the metal walls painfully hot.

“ _Lock the hatch!_ ” Mike screams, though he’s not sure who to.

“Got it!” Julie calls, though he thought she was— right by him— there’s at least as many copies of Julie as there are remaining Elites, clipping through the walls and furniture but drawing fire.

There’s too many, though, and by now they’re well into the living areas. The Elites on the edges of the fight are breaking away.

“Jacob! Look out, they’re inside!” Dutch calls to his comm, and Mike feels stupid for not thinking to warn him himself. He’s too slow like this, off-balance and still muzzy. He’s taking too many hits.

Running battle. Fighting retreat. Pick your ground.

“Guys, scatter,” he shouts. “We know this place better than they do!”

The fight breaks up entirely, the four of them no longer trying to pin the Elites back against the entrance hatch.

Mike thinks _Oh. Chuck_. He staggers off as fast as he can go.

 

*

 

Chuck’s standing in his cell when Mike gets there.  His elbow is roughly bandaged with a torn strip of blanket, but the inside of his forearm is bleeding sluggishly and there’s blood on his fingers.  There’s something in his bloody palm, projecting a holoscreen that splashes the image of Kane’s face larger than life in the little cell. The man’s got a sickeningly familiar expression on his face as he looks at Chuck, a warm pleased smile, like a father would smile, like a man you wish was your father would smile.

“ _Chuck_ ,” Mike croaks, catching himself against hallway wall. “Get— get away from him.”

“Mike!” Chuck yelps, distracted. “Mikey, oh my god, _what are you doing here_ —”

“Elites. They’re. They’re in here, Chuck, we gotta—” Mike swallows, closes his eyes, tries to get his feet back under him properly. “We gotta...”

“Mikey, no,  _no nononoNO! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE GONE, YOU WERE GONE, YOU WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO BE HERE,”_ Chuck screams, throwing himself at the bars.

“Came back,” Mike says.

“ _YOU IDIOT!”_

Kane starts to laugh.

Chuck whirls around. “What— no, no, Mr Kane, sir, please no, please if—can we just talk— can we talk about this—I’ll do anything you want, sir, _anything_ , if—”

“You’ve already done everything I wanted you to do,” Kane says, and Chuck falls abruptly silent.

Kane’s smile has become a lot more honest: raw, vicious hatred, and too many teeth. Chuck stares up at the holoscreen in sick horror.

“And you’re supposed to be the _smart_ one, aren’t you?” Kane gloats. “Or, well, you _were_ , until my neuroscience department got their hands on you. Tell me, how much do you even remember of who you used to be? Are you still trying to crawl back _home_  to Deluxe or are you just that tired of Chilton’s treacherous, vile company?”

Chuck makes a wordless, choking whimper. Kane grins even wider, feeding on his misery.

“Oh, but don’t look so upset, son! After all, you _will_ get to come back to Deluxe, now that you’ve handed me all your old friends on a silver plate. I can’t promise you’ll get your old job back, though. It takes a _lot_ more brain cells than _you’ll_ have left. I’ll have to see if we’ve got any openings for witless, drooling imbeciles...”

“Mike,” Chuck says. “And the— my _friends_ , what are you going to do to my _friends_?”

Kane laughs again and leans in. “I will put them down like animals,” he purrs, “One... by... _one_ , right in front of you, and I’ll eliminate Chilton last, so he _understands_ the nature of _treachery_. So he _really understands_ what betrayal feels like. And they’ll all know, as you watch them die, that you won’t remember _a thing_.”

“ ** _NO!_** ” Chuck howls, a huge, visceral, _tearing_ sound, and launches for the hologram. He swings his fist straight through Kane’s face, and the man throws his head back and laughs.

“See you soon, Burner scum!” he sings out, and disappears just before Chuck can punch his hollow image again.

Chuck falls back against the door.

“Let me out,” he demands. “Mikey, let me out, let me out, I mean it this time, _let me out!”_

“No keys,” Mike says numbly. He can hear the steady ring of footsteps as Elites close in on them. Chuck makes an awful noise, hurting and terrified and frustrated, pounding the door with his fists. He’s going to hurt his hands again.

“ _LET ME OUT!”_

When Mike pushes off from the wall again, his legs hold. The world swoops and wobbles around him, but he manages to walk, steadily, down the hall towards the oncoming Elites. They raise their guns, and he thinks _oh_.

He drops into a sweeping kick as they open fire, and grabs for the man’s gun as he falls. There’s a terrible struggle and Mike feels something crunch as boots pound into him, the Elites mercilessly kicking both him and their comrade, but Mike’s hands close around the gun and he gets it away.

He turns, wrestles his arms free, strains back towards Chuck’s cell, and opens fire on the lock. It heats up: dull red, bright red, then orange, a molten yellow, he doesn’t know if that’s hot enough but someone’s got a handful of his hair and someone else has his throat. He can’t breathe, can barely see, and someone kicks him somewhere else that crunches.

“GET OFF HIM,” Chuck screams, and then he’s there, tearing Mike away from the chokehold, punching another guy right in the mask. Mike tries to focus, but everything’s a mess of pain and color, he can’t get a grip. He leans heavily on Chuck and kicks an Elite in the gut when he comes close enough.

“You gotta get these cuffs off!” Chuck yells, and it’s too close to Mike’s ear and too loud but Mike still can’t quite figure out what the words mean for a second.  He just stares at Chuck, watches Chuck yell at him.  He probably deserves it. “Mikey, _focus_! There’s a key!”

“Don’t have keys...” Mike mumbles.

“It’s a key-code, _here!”_ They’re in a corner, the corner at the end of the hall, Chuck’s got Mike around the waist, holding him upright against his chest. The Elites are all down. The gun in Chuck’s hand is making a significantly louder, more vicious hum than it did when one of them was using it. Mike thinks he’s missing something important.

“Put... in... the... _code_ ,” Chuck says, which is kind of funny, because he’s the guy with all the codes, he’s the code guy that does the code things. But the keypad is really small, hidden under a sliding panel in a bracelet. Mike knows this code, he has this key, it’s easy, four numbers and his thumb pressed to the sliding panel. This makes the bracelet fall off, which is probably not good, probably Mike broke it or something, he doesn’t know how to work with tech like this, he’s just a cadet.

“ _YES_ ,” Chuck shrieks, “YES YES YES!” so apparently Mike did it right after all. That’s good.

The walls are humming. Things are unfolding. The air smells sharp, and there are screams echoing in the distance. Chuck is at the center of a kaleidoscope of windows, his fingers a blur, his face set in a vicious, victorious grin.

“‘M gonna sit,” Mike mumbles, and drops heavily to his butt. He leans his head against a cool, solid wall, and feels long fingers ruffle his hair.

“You chill, buddy,” Chuck says. “I got this.”

Mike chills.  At some point, Chuck laughs, kind of high and scared, kind of hard and angry, and in the distance there’s a familiar metallic _crunch-_ WHOOMPH of bots blowing up.  Texas must have got here at some point, because nobody else can _hwa-cha_ and _hiiiiya!_ Like Texas can.  Somebody grabs his leg but then Chuck grunts and a guy yells and the hand lets go.

“ _I’m on your side_!”  Chuck says, and that explosion has to be his slingshot, but none of Mike’s friends make any noises like they’re in pain, so Chuck must be shooting to protect him.

That’s good.  That’s really good.

Mike drifts for a while after that.  Once or twice he manages to crack an eye open, and once he tries to get up but everything kind of spins dizzyingly when he tries that, so he stops trying.  Eventually there are more and more friendly voices, less shouting, no explosions.  

“Mike?”  Somebody is patting his face.  Julie.  Julie?  Yeah.  Gotta be, her hands are always cold.  “Talk to me, Cowboy—”

“He got shot like eighty times,” Texas reports, from somewhere far away.

“Oh my god,” Chuck mumbles feverishly, closer—where’s the hand that was in Mike’s hair?  That was nice.  At least he’s still leaning on Chuck—he can feel Chuck’s shoulder against the back of his skull, shaking just a little.  He’s trembling.  Mike twitches, shifts a hand and tries to turn his head and then groans as the room spirals into vertigo again.

“I’m so sorry Mikey this was all my fault—”

“Yeah, it was,” says Texas—Chuck makes a crushed little noise, and Mike wants to glare at Texas except he kinda feels like if he opens his eyes he’ll throw up.  “Uh, you guys know he’s totally out of his room, right?  Big Texas ain’t the only one seeing this.”

“I’m not gonna run!”

“He could have gone with them,” Julie says.  “He’s still here, okay?  Right now we have to take care of Mike.”  

“Yeah, we can figure out what to do with him later, okay?”  Dutch sounds all ragged and hoarse, like somebody choked him.  Mike hopes whoever did that got kicked in the face. “Just—if you really wanna prove you’re...feeling better, or whatever’s goin’ on with you, just go back in there for now, okay?”

“I…” Chuck’s breath is trembling too.  “I mean, I will, but Mike melted the lock, I don’t think the door even closes.”

“All I’m sayin’—”

“Nnnh,” says Mike.  “ _No._  Hey, no.”  Thinking of words is way harder than it should be.  “No.  Chuck.  Stay.”

Chuck makes a really weird kind of strangled noise, like...he can’t decide if he should be laughing or sighing or sobbing and he’s kind of doing all of them.  

“Mike, no.  He’s right, I should stay away from—”

He tries to push Mike off of him.  Mike presses back into Chuck’s chest as hard as he can, suddenly scared.  Chuck’s trying to leave.  Chuck’s going to _leave_ again, and that’s not okay.  That’s seriously not cool at all.  “—Mikey, come on.”

“Don’t go,” Mike says again, louder this time, and finds something to hold onto—Chuck’s arm, shaking and weirdly slick under his hand.  “Buddy, please, d’n _nhhah—_ ” moving shifted his other hand, and his whole wrist and hand are on fire.  The pain, on top of the way his head was already spinning, is sickeningly intense.  “ _Stay._ ”

There’s a long second where nobody says anything at all.  Then Julie sighs and says “...well, you heard him.  He—wow, what did you do to your _arm_?”

ROTH’s arms fold up under Mike and lift him, but Chuck grabs a hold of his non-mangled hand and doesn’t let go.  Mike drops his head back, hearing his friends’ voices around him without really listening, and lets himself…

“Hey!  Hey, no sleeping.”

Mike jolts awake, and then instantly regrets it because everything is still kind of spinning and hard to focus on and everything hurts.  Like, _everything_.  Texas is glaring at him.

“You’re not supposed to sleep if anything on your head is bleeding,” he says sagely, and punches Mike’s shoulder as he tries to close his eyes again.  “Hey!  No.  Texas is watchin’ you, Tiny.  If your head is bleeding and you sleep, you _die._ Do you need me to talk louder because I can totally talk louder, check out these super-powerful airbags.”

“Those are lungs,” says Dutch, weary, somewhere on the other side of ROTH.  “The things you breathe with are called ‘lungs’.”

“Nuh-uh they’re airbags like a car ‘cause Texas is a MEAN MACHINE! KA—”

“Guys, I think Mike’s got a headache,” says Julie, because Julie is _amazing._  “Can we keep the yelling down a little bit?”

“A bunch of Kane’s guys got him on the ground,” Chuck says, really small and quiet, and his hand squeezes on Mike’s.  “I...I got them off, but he had to shoot the lock off first, I couldn’t see—if one of them kicked him in the head…”

There’s a pause.  Then, “ _Don’t sleep, Mike!_ ”  Texas says, about two inches from Mike’s ear and at the top of his lungs.  “DON’T GO TOWARD THE LIGHT OR WHATEV— _mmph!_ ”

“Texas, _stop yelling at him_!”

The sounds of scuffle and Texas grunting indignantly filter up from somewhere behind them as the light shining through Mike’s eyelids changes.  ROTH chirrups at him and then lays him down carefully on something hard and flat, and slides a pillow under his head.  One spongy appendage pats his chest.  

“Get off!”  Texas has apparently struggled free again, but thankfully he’s either not yelling as much or he’s doing it somewhere much farther away from Mike’s ear.  “Okay, how do you fix it when somebody gets kicked in the head.”

“Who got kicked in the head?”  Jacob too?  Awesome.  Mike raises a hand. _Present, sir._  Jacob makes that old-man noise he makes when Mike does something dumb, kinda sucking in air through his teeth.  “Goldarnit, kid.”

“We got some kind of scanner around here somewhere,” Dutch says, and things shift in the room around them.  “How does this thing—”

“I know how it works,” says Chuck, and starts to pull away; Mike makes a panicky noise before he can stop himself, and grabs at him with both hands.  Or at least he tries to—his left hand responds by not doing at all what he wants it to, and instead sending jagged, spasming pain up his entire arm.  Mike falls back on the table, groaning through his teeth as the agony slowly fades, and Chuck is immediately by his side, hands fluttering anxiously and barely touching like he’s afraid he’ll hurt Mike more by being there.  It’s so nice to hear his voice again, hear him _worry_ about Mike again, Mike just kind of lies there and enjoys it for a second.

“Mike, no, okay—” Chuck is saying when Mike tunes back in.  His hands kind of pat and dart away again like he’s not sure touching is alright; shoulders, chest, the hand that doesn’t hurt.  “Mikey, you gotta lay still, it’s okay.  Okay?  I’m not gonna go anywhere—jeez your hand looks really bad…”

“Head first, hand later,” says Julie.  “Here.  You said you know how to use this thing?”

“I mean, it’s kind of a piece of junk,” says Chuck, but he’s got that preoccupied sound to his voice.  That’s his fixing-things voice.  It’s so nice to hear it again, _man_ it’s so nice.  

“I got this,” says Jacob.  The scanner beeps complainingly, and then boots up with a whirr as Jacob thumps it a couple of times with the heel of one hand.  “—There we go!”  

“Okay,” says Chuck.  “Here, I’ll do it.  Mike, hold really still okay?”

Oh cool, that’s something he can totally do for once.  Mike lies still, and something flashes green through his eyelids.  Once, twice, three times.  

“What’s it say?”  Texas demands.

“It’s compiling.”

“Is that bad?”

“Dude, gimme a sec.  Okay?”

Mike tries opening his eyes again. Encouragingly, the dizziness seems to have faded a bit since last time and taken some of the nausea with it.  The lights still feel like they’re stabbing him in the eyes, though.

“...’m okay,” he says.  His hand is bloody where he was hanging onto Chuck’s arm.  Chuck is bleeding.  “Chuck.  Arm.  Y’r arm.”

“I’ll heal,” says Chuck shortly.  Still busy.  He’s holding something that looks kind of like a gun, but too short and flat to be a gun, and there are screens hovering up above it.  “I mean...I don’t see anything.  Do you guys see anything?”

“Is that a _brain_ ?”  Texas leans in, nose wrinkling.  “Aw, _sick!_ ”

“It’s Mike’s brain,” says Dutch. “What’s that?”

“Comm implant, I think,” says Julie.  “I don’t see anything?  Does it do analyses for you?”

“Uhhh...dunno?”  Chuck pulls up another screen and types on it for a couple of busy seconds.  He’s out and everybody is gathered around him and he’s not fighting anybody and his hair is short but other than that it could almost all be okay.  Mike smiles at all of them, grinning wide and kind of dumb but completely genuine for the first time in a long time. Dutch rolls his eyes at him when he catches Mike at him, which is fine too. 

“0.48% chance of undetected hemorrhage,” Chuck reads off.  “Okay.  So his brain’s probably not bleeding.  That’s good.”

“Couldn’t he still have a concussion, though?”  Julie sounds pained.  “How do we tell?”

“Don’t look at me, dude.”

Oh. _Ohh,_ that makes a lot of sense, actually.

“Yeah,” says Mike.  “Concussion.  Yeah, probably.”

“Okay, that’s it,” says Jacob.  Mike opens his eyes again—Jacob is hobbling over to the motley collection of bottles and packets that passes for a medicine cabinet.  “I’m breaking out the good stuff.  We still got some Deluxe nanites in here somewhere...”

“Oh—” Mike tries to sit up, immediately concerned—those are for something _serious_ , he’s totally had a concussion before and handled it.  “I don’t need—”

“You’re a mess and you gotta lie down, _now_ ,” says Dutch firmly.  “I’m getting pretty used to tazing people, don’t push me.”

Mike can’t tell if he’s serious or not.  He lies back down.

The nanites are an injection, which isn’t Mike’s favorite thing but aren’t nearly as bad as the oral stuff they gave cadets when Mike was in training.  Kane Co.’s only priority was that the drugs were effective, not that they tasted good.  Compared to choking down the weird, chemical sludge every couple of months, the needle-sting in his arm is nothing.

“Okay,” says Dutch, once the injection is in.  “Now.  You just lie there and rest.”

“What?”  Nanites are supposed to be _fast,_ and lying down is the worst.  Mike pushes himself up, fully prepared to throw his legs over the side of the bed and stand up and totally prove he’s fine, and then yells as Texas grabs him by the shoulders and shoves him back down.  “ _Ow._  Okay!  Fine.”  

“I’m gonna go back to my room,” says Chuck.  “My...y’know, my other room, not my...Burner room.  My cell.  Y’know.”

“ _No_ ,” says Mike, grabbing him with his working hand.

“Mike, just let him—”

“No!”

“Texas will stand outside this door too,” Texas contributes wearily.  “Tiny’s gonna be a tough guy about this, gotta do the dudely thing and let him.”

“Holding hands is ‘dudely’?”  Julie sounds amused and confused in equal measures.  A chair scrapes.  Chuck sits down next to him, not going anywhere.  The others are walking away, and Mike doesn’t really want them to go anywhere either but at least he knows for sure they’re going to stay.  They’ll be around.  But Chuck needs to stay.  Until Mike can get up and hold him and make sure he’s not going to leave, he needs to stay right here.

Chuck holds his hand.  Mike sleeps.


	4. Chapter 4

  


When he wakes up, the first thing Mike notices is that he’s really, really hungry.  The vertigo and nausea have vanished, and the headache they’ve left behind is bearable enough the lights don’t make Mike want to curl into a ball and hold onto his head to keep it from splitting open.  Both of his hands work, now, even if his wrist and three of the fingers on his left hand ache like he slammed them in a door or something. And his ribs feel pretty bruised but he can breathe just fine. And he’s _starving._

“...wow,” says Mike, and rolls over with an effort, staring blearily around the room.  “Nn _nnh_.  Nanites.  Good stuff.”

“Mike!”

Mike jumps and whips around and sees Chuck halfway across the room, hurrying towards him, hands outstretched.  He reaches out for Mike’s shoulder, and after weeks of conditioning Mike can’t help the way he flinches away, readying for a fight.  Chuck snatches his hand back immediately, looking horrified and ashamed, and Mike feels like crap.

“I’m sorry,” they say at the same time.

“This is all my fault,” Chuck says next, before Mike can say anything else.  “I should’ve—I was so dumb, this was stupid, and then you got hurt and it was all my—”

“No!”  he’s trying to pull away again.  Mike reaches out after him, swaying where he sits, spares a second to notice that _wow_ his fingers are turning some pretty great colors and then catches Chuck’s hand.  Reels him back in.  “No, dude, no.  This is _Kane’s_ fault.”

The reminder makes Chuck twitch, a weird little spasm.  “The chair,” he says, desperately, like it’s an explanation.  “—they didn’t tell me what they were doing, I tried but I didn’t know, and I couldn’t…”

“That stuff wasn’t your fault either.”  It’s really important for Chuck to understand that.  The more he tries to talk about what happened to him the more his eyes go wide and wet and confused, more like the lost kid they dragged down here weeks ago and less like himself.  “We should’ve found you sooner.”

“Yeah,” says Chuck, refocusing sudden and bitter.  “You should have.”

Mike flinches.  Chuck stares at him for a second and then he’s crumpling in on himself, pulling his hand away from Mike’s to cover his face.  

“No,” he groans, “—no no no I didn’t mean that, I’m sorry…”

“Hey, _hey._ ”  Mike grabs his wrists, easing his hands away.  Chuck hunches down and doesn’t meet Mike’s eyes.  “Don’t do that, okay?  Chuckles, look at me.”

“... _I don’t want to,_ ” says Chuck, barely audible.  He looks miserable, and that’s totally not okay, because he’s Mike’s again—he’s a _Burner_ again.  And it would be great if that made him happy because heck, it makes Mike...wow, it makes Mike really _really_ happy, having him back.  But Chuck just sits there all pulled in tight, bruised and short-haired and miserable and bandaged.

“...what happened to your arm?”

Chuck looks down and covers up the bandages with his other hand immediately, but Mike saw the patch of blood on them before Chuck covered them up.  He edges forward on the makeshift bed, concerned, trying to get a look, and Chuck pulls his hands free and folds his arms, hiding the bloody spot completely, shoulders tight and head down.

“I wanted to contact Kane,” he says.  “I mean, I didn’t really want—I _had_ to, before I got any more…” he thins his lips, chokes the words off and looks away.  For a second he sits there, still, breathing shallow and rough through his nose—then he starts again, flattening his voice out all cold and flat and wrong.  “Julie said there was an implant.  In my arm, y’know, under the skin.  Pulled one of the blades off the ventilation fan in the ceiling and... and dug it out.”

Mike winces, pained but impressed.  “And he followed the signal?”

“Couldn’t wait for him to follow it,” Chuck says.  His fingers sketch shapes in the air as he talks, illustrating.  “I was starting to—I knew I couldn’t…” he stops, starts again.  “Couldn’t wait for him.  I pulled wires out of the light and... amplified it.  Put a call through.  As soon as he picked up he started sending bots.”

“Wow! You’re a genius.  That’s nuts.”  Even if the mental image of Chuck biting his lip to hold in screams, bloody-handed and pale with pain, makes Mike’s stomach turn.

“I wanted him to come take me back.”  Chuck still sounds miserable.  Mike’s smile falls.  “I _knew_  I was a Burner, but I just...I wanted him to come get me, like if I went back up there I could just forget about you guys again.”

“But…” Mike fidgets a little bit, hating himself for doubting, knowing he has no choice.  “....But you know now, right, you—”

“I know!”  Chuck stands up so abruptly he almost knocks his chair over.  Mike jerks back, automatically going on the defensive, but Chuck doesn’t try to hit him.  He catches Mike’s posture, winces at it but doesn’t slump back down again this time.  He doesn’t pretend he’s calm and okay, he kicks the chair back and rakes his hands through his hair, wild-eyed.

“I know I know I know, I’m—I _know_ I’m a Burner, okay?!  I know, I get in your stupid car all the time with my _stupid_ best friend, my stupid, hot best friend with the dumb face who’s always smiling and making me do— _dumb_ stuff and _want_ to do dumb stuff like almost get myself killed five times a week and _not care!_ ”

Mike tries to say something, but Chuck is pacing back and forth and still talking desperately.

“—but I wanted to be somebody _safe,_ Mike!  I wanted—to be that guy, with that life, the one with a safe place up in the sunshine, who didn’t have to care about any of this crap, who didn’t have to fight with you guys all the time and _want to_ , and now that guy is _dead._ ”

“Whoa!”  Mike throws caution to the winds and forces himself to stand up on wobbly legs.  Chuck doesn’t stop pacing when Mike reaches out for him—he shakes Mike’s hand off his arm and keeps going, lips pressed into a tight, bitter line.  “Dude, nobody’s dead!  What are you talking about?!”

“I was...somebody else, up there,” Chuck says, and he’s obviously making an effort to keep his voice flat and calm but it’s not working very well.  “I had to give up on him, do you even get that?  Didn’t you have to... do you remember what it felt like, when you gave up on being a commander?”

Mike winces—of course he remembers, but nobody died that day.  He didn’t give up on anybody.

“You had a future up there,” Chuck says.  “You knew that.  You probably woulda ended up in charge of Deluxe someday.  But you... you turned around and came down here, and that future just…” he snaps his fingers.  Mike stares at him, still confused—Chuck stares back for a long second, and then breathes out slow and harsh.  Some of the hard, electric tension drains out of him, leaving him slumped and pale and drained.  “...But you didn’t think about that, did you?  You never think about stuff, Mike, you just make it all happen, like it’s no big deal.”  For just a minute, he sounds bitter.  Then he sighs and finally stands still, rubbing at his eyes like he’s got a headache too.

“You’re a big deal,” says Mike, a little bit faster and louder than he means to.  “Uh.  To me.  You guys.  My friends.  You’re a big deal, to me.”

Chuck laughs bitterly. “Yeah, Mikey, I kinda figured that one out when I had to sit there in that _freaking cell_ every day and watch you go to _pieces_ over your stupid dead best friend.  I know you care, okay?  I know, every time I tried to get out I was tearing you up inside!  Do you even get how _screwed up_ that was!?”

Apparently Mike’s been upset enough over the situation that _Chuck_ has been pitying him for it.  Deluxe-Chuck even!  From inside his freakin’... _prison_ _cell_.  So that’s great.

“I’ve been doing alright,” he says defensively.

“Mike, you’ve lost like fifteen pounds,” Chuck scoffs, and runs both hands through his hair. “There’s been like a 200% increase in physical trauma every time you went out to fight Kane. It’s like you thought you could just _punish_ yourself enough to fix things.”

“Um. No,” Mike says, but his ears are burning with embarrassment.

“And I mean it isn’t even all about _you_ , I’ve been messing with _all of you_ , I mauled Texas and Dutch, I tried to kill _Julie_ . I almost got _all_  you guys killed. If I’d just—I thought I could just—if I could get free, you guys would be free of me, too. We could all stop hurting each other. It would be _over._ ”

“And you’d be dead,” Mike says.

“ _I was going to die either way_ ,” Chuck snaps, and there’s the anger again, that violent, vengeful fury Mike’s gotten way too familiar with—he steps back, hastily, but there’s no door between them anymore.

But Chuck just slumps, and sighs again, and scrubs his big hands over his tired face.

“I wanted to take the Motorcity guy out with me, if I wasn’t going to make it back to Deluxe alive,” he says. “I think I’ve always wanted that pathetic coward gone, I just never figured out how to do it without letting the rest of you down. Kane probably got an admin pass to rewrite my freakin’ brain the minute he told me he could do it.”

“I don’t believe that.”

Chuck reaches down and sets his chair upright again, moving slow and heavy like he’s a million years old. He sits down in it. “...I bet you don’t,” he says, quiet and toneless.

“Chuck, you’re bravest one of us, you know that?”

“I know you’re a terrible liar.”

“No, man, _listen_ ,” Mike presses.  “If you really wanted to be _safe_ , you could— you could stay back in the Garage, with Jacob, _he_ doesn’t come along, you could run a lot of tech support right from the frickin’ couch on the landing. But you jump into Mutt with me every time. Any fight we get into, you’re right there behind me with your slingshot, ready to shoot some giant monster _in the face_.”

“Like a moron,” Chuck agrees morosely.

“And then you go out and fight these big fantasy battles on the weekend! Like! For fun! You play a guy who _leads armies_.”

“What’s your _point,_ Mikey?”

“There is no possible way you _let_ Kane make you into a normal guy. Heck, I bet you put up a fight the whole time you were up there.” He can almost see it— _has_ seen it, now.  He knows how much of a fight Chuck can put up, even unarmed and outnumbered, and that was when he just thought he was a harmless Kane Co. intern.  “You... ha.  I bet it took them three or four people just to get you in the chair.”

“...I was so sure you were going to come bursting through the door,” says Chuck distantly. Remembering. “At the last second, y’know, you always do. But you didn’t. And then I forgot you ever would.”

“I wanted to,” Mike says, desperately. “I—I wanted to, so much, we were searching everywhere for you but you were just _gone_ , man, I was—I was going nuts—”

“Yeah. I went nuts too.”

Mike doesn’t know how to fix this. Chuck’s still kind of messed up in the head, still _hurt_. He’s angry at Mike for not saving him soon enough, for saving him at all, for caring about him, for not getting it right, for even trying, for being sorry, and he’s obviously guilty about all the same things too.

“I failed you,” Mike says, sitting on the cot by Chuck’s chair.  “I’m so sorry.”

Chuck gives him a tired look. “I _know_. Mike. I know. You screwed up and you’re sorry and you’ll do anything to make it right, I know. I know you.” Chuck sighs. “Everyone screws up sometimes, man. I guess I screwed up too, getting caught. _Twice._ ”

They sit in silence for a minute after that.  Chuck is poking at the bandaged spot on his arm.  Mike tests out the hand that got stomped on, letting himself focus on the bruises and aches instead of the awkward, awful silence between them.

“...I  _am_ sorry,” he says again, finally.

“Mike…” Chuck sighs. 

“No, listen,” says Mike.  “I’m just—I’m sorry, I’m so sorry about everything, but I’m glad you’re here.  I’m so glad you’re _here_ , man.” He reaches out, hesitant, and smiles.  “...You’re home.”

Chuck doesn’t pull away when Mike’s hands settle on his shoulders, just looks at him with this weird look on his face and his head a little bit on one side.  “Can’t stop seeing it now,” he says.

“Seeing what?”  

Chuck shrugs as well as he can with Mike’s hands on his shoulders.  “...How you...look at me.”

“Huh?”  He’s just smiling.  It’s kind of a big, goofy smile, because— _jeez,_ because Chuck’s _back,_ and anything that’s still wrong they can figure out because he’s _back_ —but it’s just a smile.  This is how he always smiles at Chuck.

“How you look at me, Mikey, your face just...kinda…” He reaches out and Mike would swear he feels an actual _shock_ when their skin touches, an electric little buzz.  He touches Chuck all the time, that’s just how they roll; casual contact stopped being a big deal a long time ago.  But this isn’t casual-best-friend-touching Chuck.  Not with the way his fingertips feel out the corner of Mike’s smile, the way his blunt nails trace Mike’s cheekbone, the way he abruptly, electrifyingly aware all of a sudden that he's not wearing a shirt.  

“Is it...okay if I…?”  Mike starts, not even sure what he’s going to ask, and Chuck’s gaze flicker over his face, catch briefly on Mike’s lips and then drag up to his eyes, his own wide and dark.  “Can I just—”

Mike is in the process of cautiously shifting his hands up Chuck’s shoulders when Texas kicks the door open and announces  “ _BIG TEXAS!!_ ” so loudly Chuck almost falls off his chair again.  The hand on Mike’s face is abruptly gone, taking with it the warm, rushing excitement in his chest, the look in Chuck’s eyes and any remnants of romantic atmosphere.  

“Hey, you’re up!” says Texas.  Chuck kind of keels back in his chair, holding his chest and breathing hard.  Texas strides in, leans on the back of Chuck’s chair so hard the front legs lift off the ground, and squints at Mike.  “You look awful but Texas has seen worse.  Come on, dude, get up, get dressed, and get outta here!  Jacob made ‘we’re totally still alive’ dinner!”

“Coming,” says Mike, with every intention of getting Texas out of the room as quickly as possible.  “Be right there.”

Chuck glances at him, and then back down at his own big, knuckly hands.  He’s smiling to himself, a really adorable, weird, private little smile.  Mike was _totally_ going to kiss him and it was going to be _great._  He still totally would, but Texas is just standing there waiting, apparently not noticing the pointed tone of Mike’s voice.

“Coming,” Chuck repeats, a little tentatively, and for just a second they all go still, waiting to see if that’s okay.  

Then Texas rolls his eyes and goes “Well yeah, you’re totally still alive right?”  He squints at Chuck.  “...Right?”

“...Yeah,” says Chuck, almost startled, like that realization comes as a surprise.  “Yeah.  Guess I am.”

 

*

 

Jacob has made some kind of dense loaf thing that tastes kind of like meat and mostly like mustard, and a huge salad that Mike drags over and starts eating directly from the serving bowl after his first experimental nibble of a spinach leaf. His nanite debt wants _iron_ , and it wants it _now_.

The other Burners slouch over their plates, eating and trash-talking with various levels of enthusiasm. Dutch still sounds sandpaper-hoarse, Julie has nasty bruises on her face and hands and Texas has a big burned welt across his shoulder and right up his neck, but there’s a kind of tired satisfaction in the air anyway.

“We got so much rebuilding to do,” Dutch sighs eventually, when most of the loaf thing is gone and Jacob has pulled out a sheet of surprisingly edible rhubarb cookies.

“Are the cars okay?” Mike asks.

“Yeah, man, they’re all pretty much alright. But like half our base has got pulled apart, it’s like an exploded diagram, minus the diagram. I better make real nice with the Cablers for more solder, I bet, there’s no way we got enough in the garage.”

“We definitely do not,” Jacob says.

“Urgh.” Mike swallows the rest of the salad in a thick, unpleasant knot. “Yeah, that’s a real safety concern, has anyone prioritized which walls we need to get back up? We can’t just be sitting around out in the open if—”

“Easy, Cowboy,” Julie says, and punches his arm gently. “I’m on it. And we pretty much whupped Kane all the way back to Deluxe once their dumb giant tazer things got taken offline, he won’t be trying this kind of head-on attack any time soon.”

Mike frowns and rubs at his arm, still thinking hard. “But if Kane knows where we are—”

“I’m _on_ it, Mike, _chill,_ ” Julie says. “We sent a trojan up through the— uh, that link Chuck established. It took out like, half Kane’s database on us before he caught on.” She grins, vicious and familiar, dark eyes flashing. “He was _so mad_.”

“And Texas did all the coordination and managing and stuff,” Texas butts in. “ _As usual_. No need to thank me. But you could if you wanna.”

“You got a good team, kid,” Jacob says, ruffling Mike's hair. “Lotta bright bulbs in this bunch.”

Mike takes a deep breath in, and lets it out with a whole lot of his worry.

“You guys _are_ brilliant,” he smiles, “I know you’ve all been doing great while I was lazing around.”

“Getting your beauty sleep is important, little man,” Texas says. “You’re never gonna measure up to all of Texas’s awesome if you keep getting—” he makes an awkward gesture, “—like, dinged up and stuff. It’s not a great look, buddy.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.” Mike says solemnly.

Dutch rubs his chin. “You know, I could make you a mask,” he says. “Like if you get uglier.”

“Aw, come on—”

“Yeah!” Julie says brightly. “I mean some of us wanna _eat_ here, Mike! It’s not so great to try and do that while sitting next to the world’s saddest pile of hamburger.”

“I _did_ get pretty sick of having to look at you,” Chuck chimes in, grinning, and it kind of stabs Mike through the heart. Chuck bites his lip and goes pale in the sudden, awful silence.

“Oh,” Chuck says softly. “Uh.”

Mike tries to shrug it off before anyone can look at Chuck any more accusingly.

“I guess I’ll just have to schedule more naps,” he says, lightly. “I know how to quit when I’m outnumbered—”

“Ch’ _yeah,_ ” Texas says skeptically, as Dutch laughs “ _Man_ , don’t even!” and Julie goes “Mike, no you don’t.” Chuck just snorts, and shakes his head, and looks a little less awful.

But now that Chuck’s entered the conversation, however awkwardly, the other Burners have stopped diplomatically pretending like everything’s normal, and are watching him intently. Chuck folds into himself, tense and miserable, his gaze flicking from Julie’s injuries to Dutch’s and to Texas’s and then back, lingeringly, on Mike’s.

“Hey,” Mike says, and nudges him. “It’s okay. We’re okay.”

“We’re _not_ okay!” Chuck says fiercely, and everyone flinches. He takes a deep breath and splays his big, raw-knuckled hands palm-down on the table.   _Look.  Not going anywhere.  You’re all safe._  The fact he feels like he has to do that makes Mike’s gut twist.  The fact it actually makes him feel better is worse.

“You can ask me stuff if you want,” Chuck says to the other Burners, his voice tight and trembling. “I think I owe you guys some straight answers.”

“Uh yeah, Texas first.”  Texas is already sitting forward, one hand aggressively raised.  “What happened up there?  Did Kane punch you with a shark? Like in the head? And eat your brain?”

“I still don’t remember most of it.”  Chuck studies his own fingers instead of looking at Texas.  “Sorry. Uh...I remember getting dragged up into a room with a chair, and strapped down, and the back of my head…” his hand jerks up to the back of his neck, the place where Mike found those scars under his hair.  “...hurt,” he finishes abruptly, small and sick and cold.  Whatever he’s remembering makes him swallow hard, like he’s trying not to throw up—Mike reaches out to squeeze his shoulder and then stops, and then hates himself for stopping all in one painful second.    

“...okay?” Texas isn’t swayed, although he does sound slightly less gung-ho.  “So then what?”

“Then nothing.  Woke up in my room—”  Wince.  “—the room they gave me.  My—not my room.  My room’s down here. But what I thought was my room, then. In the... life they gave me.”

“Did you find anything we can use while you were up there?”  That’s from Julie.  Chuck shrugs apologetically.  

“I carried coffee.”  He thinks for a second.  “...weird, gross...Deluxe coffee-knock-off.  I really was just some nobody. I got my butt pinched by a bunch of office ladies who would probably come down here as soon as somebody asked them, and then...Kane Co. wouldn’t get any forms processed for a couple of months?  But he didn’t put me near anything important.  I think…” he stops, takes a deep breath.  “...I think he knew I was going to remember, and he didn’t want me to have anything to give you guys.”

“ _Who_ pinched your— uh—” Mike feels his ears heat as his brain catches up with his mouth. Dutch is grinning at him incredulously.

“Oh, that’s the bit you care about,” he says.

“It’s workplace harassment!” Mike protests. “We didn’t do that in Security!”

“No, but Skinny doesn’t _have_ a butt,” Texas says seriously. He shifts around in his chair to peer at Chuck’s rear end, and Chuck elbows him viciously in the face for it. “Okay, well, that hurt a little bit, but you still don’t—”

“—I do too and the office ladies liked it,” Chuck says, his voice high and strangled. “ _ANY OTHER QUESTIONS._ ”

Chuck is turned, twisting a little bit to keep Texas from looking at his butt, and now Mike is looking at it instead.  It’s on eye-level, okay, it’s right in front of him.  He’s just looking straight ahead like a totally normal person, and if he happens to be noticing what a nice handful his best friend’s butt looks like that’s probably normal too.

Mike imagines the high, startled little squeak Chuck might make if somebody pinched his butt unexpectedly, how his cheeks might go pink and his eyes would go wide, and then has to stop thinking about that.  He’s imagined reactions like those too many times in the privacy of his bedroom to deal with them right now.

“Okay!”  Chuck is trying to yell over Texas’s chortling.  “Okay, yeah, it’s hilarious, I get it!  Do you have any more questions or what?!”

“Yeah, I do,” Dutch says, raising his hand. His mouth twitches a little when Chuck glares at him. “Did _you_ pinch anyone’s butt, man? Because that’s workplace harassment.”

“Oh, for—” Chuck buries his face in his hands as Dutch cracks up. “You’re all terrible. You’re terrible people!”

“Yeah, but _did_ you—”

“Of course he didn’t,” Mike says firmly. “Guys, back off.”

“What, just because no one’s pinched _your_ —”

“ _Dutch_.”

Dutch raises both his hands in long-suffering surrender, still grinning.

“Well, dumb butt stuff aside, Texas’s questions are answered,” says Texas, packing in the rest of his portion of mystery-meatloaf.  “Cool.  Hey, I’m gonna go train these babies.”  He pats a bicep.  “So if somebody wants me tell ‘em Texas is baby-trainin’.”

“Ew,” says Dutch.

“Texas out,” says Texas.

“I’ve got a piece I was workin’ on,” Dutch says, and pushes himself up as well.  “Could use a fresh set of eyes, though.”

“Oh,” Mike starts.  “I’ll—”

“I’ll take a look,” interrupts Julie.  Mike glances at her, startled, and Julie gives him a very pointed look he doesn’t understand and purses her lips like _Mike, come on!_  Mike sits back, bemused, as Julie and Dutch start to walk toward the door.

“I guess...I’ll go clean up the storage closet?”  he says, to the rapidly-emptying room, and then glances back as a hand grabs his arm.

“Mike,” says Chuck, and squeezes.  Gives him the same wide-eyed, pointed look that Julie did. “Wait up a sec, dude.”

Mike waits up, thinking maybe he gets it.  The other Burners keep an eye on him as they head toward the door—Mike waves them off, grinning like there’s no twinge of nervous anticipation sparking through his guts right now.

“Chuckles?” he asks, as Julie closes the door behind her.  Chuck is watching him, still holding on to his arm.  “Something wrong— _mmh_.”

Kissing and talking don’t mix well, it turns out.  Mike kind of clips one of his teeth on Chuck’s and it hurts, but kissing is way better than talking anyway so who cares.  Mike throws an arm around Chuck’s shoulders and—

Realizes. Pulls back.

_I did get pretty sick of having to look at you._

Chuck blinks down at him, startled and a little bit hurt and Mike feels like a heel but he can’t tell if that confused hurt is real or not.  He doesn’t know if _anything_ is real or not. He feels bad.  Wrong.  He takes away the arm around Chuck’s shoulders, and then when the bad feeling doesn’t go away he steps back and puts space between them, making himself breathe.

“We shouldn’t,” he says.  “You’re not—you could still be messed up.” _You could still be messing_ me _up—_ no. No. Maybe.  “—From, um, everything.  And, and if you’re still--”  Chuck is staring at him, lips just a little bit parted, and Mike wants literally _nothing_ more right now than to push forward into the touch and let Chuck kiss him again.  “If that’s why—”

“No—Mike, seriously.”  Chuck takes a step forward, and then a hasty step back again when that makes Mike tense up all over, maybe to fight and maybe to run and run and never stop.  “I do, I want to.”

“But what if—”

“I _want_ to. I really, actually, genuinely, I _promise_ want to. I’ve been stuck in a box with no privacy for _weeks_ , and you kept _looking_ at me like— god, Mike, I really, _really_ want to.”

“You never did before,” says Mike, and he sounds, wow, he sounds a lot more pathetic than he meant to. Chuck stares at him.

“...I did. Of _course_ I did. I just didn’t want to mess things up by, um, by trying to see if— if the way you looked at me meant what I _wanted_ it to mean. I’m a coward, remember?”

“Well. Me too, then,” Mike says. “You always liked Claire and I thought it was, you know, it was fine. You were my best friend. That was enough.”

“Well, okay, Claire is probably the most beautiful girl in the entire world, but like, dude. You’re my best friend, too.” Chuck gives a crooked little smile. “I never actually got sick of your dumb face, okay? I don’t think I could.”

It’s jarring to go from _pathetic_ to _the happiest he’s ever been in his whole life_ in just a couple sentences, and Mike’s pretty used to going fast. But it’s awesome.

“...you said I was hot,” he realizes out loud, all over again and amazed.

“Oh, you heard that?”  Chuck shrugs, wry and self-conscious and not quite meeting Mike’s eyes.  “I only said it, like ten, twenty times.  Don’t get too full of yourself.”

“But you think I’m _hot_ ,” Mike repeats, because that’s _really_ important to get right.  That deep, heavy wrongness is starting to dissipate, and this time when Chuck steps forward Mike doesn’t back away.

“Yeah, well, Deluxe-Chuck wasn’t _completely_ wrong about you,” Chuck says, and tugs at the lapel of Mike’s jacket.  “...You should take this off.”

“Huh?”  Mike likes this jacket.  It’s comfortable.  “Why?”

“Come _on_ , Mike.”  Chuck rolls his eyes despairingly.  “Just take off the jacket.”

Oh. _Oh._ Mike follows orders.  Chuck watches avidly as he twists, working to get the sleeves off, and then reaches out and runs a big, skinny hand along one of Mike’s arms, tracing the line of one bicep so lightly the touch makes Mike shiver.  

“...you never even do pushups,” he says, a little bit breathlessly.  “You lucky _jerk._  I’ve been doing them ever since they woke me up and I’m still in exactly the same shape as I was before I started.”

“You’re really not,” Mike puts in, and returns the favor, feeling the new, lean muscle in Chuck’s shoulders and arms.  “Your shirts _definitely_ didn’t fit like this, before.  I would’ve... noticed.  I totally would have noticed.”

Newly, weirdly confident this new Chuck might be, but he still looks frankly startled whenever somebody actually pays attention to him, and compliments still make him grin a big, stupid, doofy grin.  It’s adorable.  He’s adorable.

“Dude,” says Mike, because what he means to say is _never stop looking at me like that never leave me again I missed this so much I thought I was gonna die_.  “Dude” is close enough, right?  Chuck will get what that means.  “Dude, you’re so cute.”

“I should walk out right now,” says Chuck, and for just the barest split second panic thrills up Mike’s spine, a hot desperate flash of _no you can’t not again don’t go_.  Then Chuck is talking again, grinning.  Teasing him, _joking,_ that was a joke.  Mike breathes out.  “Seriously, ‘cute’?  You can totally do better than that.”

“Uh...you’re an awesome super-genius and I don’t deserve you?”

“Getting warmer...”

“...I want you to kiss me again?”  and then, before Chuck can answer, “...I _need_ you to kiss me again.  Kissing you is the best, bro, you blow my mind—”

“Better.”  Chuck’s leaning in closer with every word, which means Mike can get a handful of his butt and the other hand onto Chuck’s slim waist and stroke the skin with one thumb.  Judging by the way that makes Chuck shiver all over, he appreciates the attention. He says, breathlessly, “...you have no idea how bad I wanted to do this, Mikey, there was _always_ somebody watching and I just had to sit there in a box and think about...things.  Well, try not to think about things, mostly.”

“You can think about them now,” Mike says hopefully. “And tell me about them.”

Chuck’s leaned in close enough that his breath is against Mike’s mouth, and when he licks his lips it’s almost too much, Mike’s going to _die_ if they don’t get to—

An alarm goes off.

“KANE’S GOT SOME KIND OF SPIDER MECHAS AND THEY’RE TEARING STUFF APART UP ON NORTHSIDE,” Jacob shouts over the intercom.

Chuck says a word he must have learned from Kane’s evil torturer guys. Mike wouldn’t have phrased it like _that_ , but he can’t actually disagree.

“Okay, let’s go,” he sighs.

Of all things, this makes Chuck burst out laughing. “Oh my god, Mikey, could you sound less enthusiastic—” and he grabs Mike by the shoulders, pulls him the rest of the way in and kisses him _really thoroughly_.  Mike kind of forgets about things like alarms and Kane and spider robots and torturer guys and everything that isn’t how warm Chuck’s mouth is against his, and the amazing way he smells, and how strong his hands are as he holds Mike right where he wants him. This is good. This is great. Everything is perfect.

Chuck finally pulls away, breathing hard, and Mike stares up at him in absolute confusion.

“Okay,” Chuck says breathlessly, eyes bright, mouth dark and wet and _grinning_. “Let’s go, right?”

Chuck is here. He’s coming too. He’s a Burner again, he’s coming too, he’s going to fight, they’re together again. Just like that, Mike’s _really_ enthusiastic.  

 

*

 

When he gets garage with Chuck jogging along behind him, all of the others stop where they are and stare warily like Mike just came in carrying a live bomb, which is— unfair, they were just all _talking_ , Chuck’s on their side now. Isn’t he? He is, right?

“Hey,” says Mike, more nervously than he means to.  “Thought we had bots to fight.”

Dutch is the closest, and he’s the one who says “You sure you can trust him to ride along?” He glances at Chuck, looks him up and down and then back to Mike.  “Like, _really_ sure?”

Mike opens his mouth to answer, but— he’s not sure. He isn’t sure at all anymore, he just—he just—he _wants_ to be sure. It’s Chuck who steps forward, pushing in front of him, and he holds out a hand.

“Mike can trust me,” Chuck says, hoarse with nerves but determined. “You can _all_ trust me. I’m with you guys on this, on stopping Kane, and defending Motorcity, and driving really, really, _really_ stupidly fast and dangerous cars. If you’ll— uh, have me back for it.”

“Okay, then,” Dutch says, and he still looks tired and kind of tense but Mike can see some of the desperate relief that he keeps feeling, mirrored in Dutch’s sudden, crooked smile. “ _Alright_. Glad to have you, man.” He grabs Chuck’s hand and instead of shaking it, pulls him into a tight embrace.

“Hey, where’s my hug!” Julie demands, trotting over. Chuck makes a strangled noise of embarrassment.

“Wait your turn, girl!” Dutch grins down at her and squares his stance. “Can’t rush a quality bro reunion.”

“Can and will, we need to get out there,” Julie says, and shoves Dutch over just enough to wrap her arms around Chuck’s waist. “Heya, Chuck, glad you’re on our side again, let’s hit the road!”

“Chyeah, Texas is going to skip this whole gross teaparty with the feelings and the snuggles and the crying and junk and just go KICK KANE’S BUTT,” Texas announces, and marches off to his car. “You better keep up, Skinny!”

The other three Burners go roaring out of the hideout before Mutt, and Mike glances over and smiles hugely, stupidly wide.  Chuck is sitting there, right where he’s supposed to be, buckling his seatbelt, cracking his knuckles and running his fingers over scrolling lines of text and symbols like every holo-screen is an old friend.

As they drive, it’s weird glancing over and actually being able to see his friend’s eyes, which are alternately squeezed shut and fixed on the road ahead of them with terrified, laser-focused intensity.  But neither of those things matter, because Chuck is in Mutt with him and they definitely kissed and Chuck thinks he’s hot and they’re going to go kill bots together.  

“ _I want to go back in my cell now please!_ ” Chuck screams when they get close enough to see the bots, which are basically tanks with garbage compactor faces and eight enormously long, triple-jointed, spear-tipped legs.

“Uh, Texas volunteers to guard that cell,” Texas pipes up over chatbox, sounding almost _nervous_. “We can go right now and do that.”

“Wait, you’re scared of spiders?” Dutch asks.

“ _YES OF FREAKIN’ COURSE_ ,” Chuck cries.

“No!” Texas says. “I just don’t like ‘em, for like, super-cool tough-guy reasons.”

“What, they insulted your mom or someth—”

“AAAH _IT’S LOOKING AT ME_ ,” Texas yells, and plows Stronghorn straight through an old warehouse to get away.

“Wow,” Julie says.

“Wow,” Dutch agrees.

“Ahaha, okay, wow,” Chuck says, and when Mike glances at him he’s got an unfairly attractive expression of breathless delight on his face and his eyes are wide and bright with the screens shining off them.  He’s _lit up_. “Okay. I’m never—OH MAN LOOK OUT _MIKE DON’T!_ — aaah, letting him forget this.”

“Be nice,” Mike says reprovingly, and the rest of the Burners sans Texas all boo at him. He throws his head back and laughs at how _great_ everything is right now, then drives Mutt straight at a spider-bot. He weaves between the stabbing legs and darts beneath its chunky, armored body, Chuck launching half a dozen warheads straight up and screaming louder than the explosions.

After that Mike loses himself in the blur and thrill of combat, speed and split-second decisions and the way his racing heart slots into the roar of his engine. The spider-bots are tricky, fast and hard to hit despite their immense bulk and really good at climbing over buildings to dodge barrages of laser-blasts and sonic bursts.  But _Chuck_ is there, sitting in Mutt yelping and yelling and kicking ass like he always used to and they’re only fighting the bots for like five minutes before he goes “Julie, you still have an oil-slick, right?!”

Dutch knocks the spiders off their building perches, Texas rallies enough to go blasting through the middle of them and gets them to follow him, Julie lays down the oil slick.  And when the bots skid and scrabble, eight legs going all different directions, Mutt is waiting on the other side of the slick with Chuck’s hands on the targeting system, ready to pick them off.  

It’s the most decisive victory they’ve had in a long while. All of Kane’s monsters defeated, no civilian casualties, hardly any structural damage, even the Burners’ cars are fine. Mike can hear the others laughing and cheering over the coms as he leans back in his seat, and he grins over at Chuck, who’s _here_.

“We won,” he says, savoring it. “We actually _won_ , dude!”

“You always win,” Chuck says, but he’s smiling back, a funny little crooked smile, his hands still busy with the holoscreens.

“Not lately,” Mike says. “I mean, not without y—” and Chuck kisses him again, which, okay, maybe he does always win, this is awesome.

“—do you think, Mike? Hey, Mike? You there?” Julie’s saying somewhere.

Chuck pulls away and says, “Hey, guys, we’ll catch up.”

“You better not be bailing out on us for Deluxe, man,” Dutch says, like he’s joking but not really. Mike tenses, Chuck looks hurt and furious and _dangerous_ , and Mike twists out of his grip, adrenaline pouring down his spine in a sick burning rush. He presses back against the door, hand fumbling for the gearshift to unscrew the head of his spark staff.  Chuck startles at the movement, wide-eyed and calculating, and for just a second it's like they don't know each other all over again.  

And then Chuck blinks and pushes himself back too, putting space between them, silent apology in every line of him.

 “...No, Dutch,” he says with exaggerated calm dignity. “I haven’t had pizza in like three months, of course I’m gonna meet you at Antonio’s.” He holds his hands up in front of himself at Mike, _calm, see, I’m okay._ “You better get me a large, though. I saved your butts.”

“Yeah, that was a nice change from kicking them. Okay, man, see you there.”

“If he goes to Deluxe I’m eating his pizza,” Texas says.

“I’m meeting you there and I’m gonna eat _your_ pizza too,” Chuck says.

“Texas would like to see you try, toothpick man!” Texas squawks, and Stronghorn does an impressively tight three-point turn before blasting off into Motorcity’s endless neon night. The other cars turn and follow, and then everything’s very quiet.

“Hey,” Chuck says to him. “Hey, Mike. Mikey. It’s okay.”

Mike nods, carefully, and takes his hand off the chrome skull.

“Sure,” he says. “Yeah.” He tries to smile. But he keeps thinking: it could be a lie. Chuck could be lying. This could all be one last trick. It’d work this time. They’re alone, Chuck could— he could so easily— he could get the drop on Mike so easily, because Mike wants this to be real _so badly_.

“I’m sorry,” Chuck says, miserable now. He reaches out, sees Mike tense again, drops his hand. “I didn’t mean— I just wanted— we can go to Antonio’s now. Okay? I just wanted to be alone with you for awhile but we should probably go and catch up with the others and you’ll feel better with more eyes on me and— I’m hungry anyway, so—”

Mike leans in and rests his forehead against Chuck’s shoulder. “No,” he says firmly. “Let’s—let’s do this. I wanna do this.”

Chuck goes very still. “That’s because you make terrible decisions, Mikey, I keep _saying_.”

Mike laughs a little, relieved.  “Yeah.”

They lean together for a while, just breathing. Mike’s skin prickles all over with anticipation, but he stubbornly refuses to move. He can trust Chuck. He’s going to. When Chuck turns around awkwardly in his seat, fumbling with his seatbelt, Mike helps him with it, and when Chuck slowly— _really_ slowly— reaches up and puts his big hands on Mike’s shoulders, Mike lets him.

“Can I...?” Chuck asks, and Mike nods sharply. “Okay.  You should...I guess you should come over here, I’ve got way more room on my--”

Mike is already climbing over.  The gearshift pokes him painfully in the hip as he tries to fit himself over the space between their seats, and for a second he gets literally _stuck_ and can’t get his leg through.  Then he comes unstuck and tumbles awkwardly into Chuck’s space, puts a hand through a screen and sets off the blastosaurus.

A nearby pile of scrap explodes.  Chuck yelps and yanks Mike forward away from his screens, then wraps his arms around Mike’s chest to type something behind him.  Mutt’s front seat gets abruptly darker as all of Chuck’s screens flicker out.  

“Sorry,” Mike says sheepishly. “Um.” He shifts around, trying to figure out what to do with his legs.

Chuck makes a rough, impatient noise and picks Mike up by his hips, dragging him squarely into his lap so his knees fit to either side of Chuck’s hips, all at once, all in one smooth movement, he _picked Mike up_.

“Whoa,” Mike gasps, and Chuck pauses.

“Okay?” he asks, and starts to pull his hands back again, making himself smaller like he thinks Mike might need space, which, no, definitely not the problem this time.  “Dude, are you—?”

“No!  Yeah, I, um,” Mike licks his lips, kind of rattled, and feels Chuck relax as Mike kind of edges forward a little, trying to find his balance, to get a solid place to kneel without kneeing Chuck anywhere.  He _picked_ Mike _up_. “Wow, bro. Uh.”

Chuck laughs and squeezes Mike’s butt. “You, uh, you like this kinda thing? Rough?”

“Yes?” Mike hazards. It’s kind of like if the desperate thrill of losing a fight were _good_. Chuck lifts him up again, just an inch or two so their faces are level, and Mike makes a completely embarrassing whine at how _hot_ that is.

“Oh my god,” Chuck says, grinning from ear to ear.  “Oh my god Mikey, I _knew_ you couldn’t be as innocent as you act!” 

“Uh?!” says Mike, and then Chuck squeezes his butt again and pulls Mike forward, tugging him around by his belt-loops to fit them together like they were made for this.  Mike loses control of his mouth for a minute, and instead of saying “ _act?_ ” he says something like “ _Unnhh—_ ah jeez, wow, that’s so—you’re so—”

“Take...here.”  Chuck’s hands are on the hem of his shirt, dragging it up.  “Lemme just...haha, _Mike,_ holy crap.”  His hands trail across Mike’s stomach, up to the curves of his ribs, feeling out every inch of him with soft fingertips.  His skin feels just a little bit too cool; Mike shivers all over when Chuck’s fingers dip under the waistband of his jeans. He gets a double handful of Mike’s butt again, squeezing and rubbing, but this time it’s skin to skin, and it should probably be silly but actually it feels _great_ , dangerous and new. Mike drops his forehead to rest against Chuck’s shoulder and just _breathes_.

“ _Chuck,_ ” he manages on an exhale. “ _Oh_.”

“Wow, listen to you,” Chuck says softly. “Can I get all this stuff off?”

“Mmm.” Mike shivers. “Yeah. Yes. Please.” He tries to fumble with the fabric, but Chuck does something really smooth with his wrists and thumbs and in a minute Mike’s lifting one knee off the seat, then the other, and just like that he’s kneeling there totally naked. He knows he’s got good coordination, Mike is one of the best cadets on record for athletics and physical acuity and Chuck has definitely tripped over like ninety percent of Jacob’s furniture, but when it comes down to what they can do with their _hands_ , Chuck can dust Mike eleven times out of ten.

His best friend plays him like a screen game, fast and easy, confident, touching him just about everywhere, drawing out startling bursts of pleasure from the back of his thighs, the stretch of his stomach, his throat, pinching his nipples. Mike totally gives up on making any kind of actual words but Chuck seems to understand him anyway, circling back to everything that felt good the first time and trying again, playing with him again, in ways that feel even better.

When Mike had let himself think about what it might be like, if Chuck ever gave him a chance, he definitely imagined this would go differently. He imagined Chuck flinchy and shy, imagined coaxing Chuck through every soft touch, every inch of lifted shirt, _c’mon, Chuckles, trust me, it’ll be great, I’ll be careful, I promise—_ like getting Chuck to drive with him.

This is not like that at all. Mike feels like a program getting torn open, a problem getting solved, a battlefield, an engine, something Chuck _knows_ , something Chuck can comprehensively destroy and _wants_ to, _likes_ to. He’s got his hands tangled clumsily in Chuck’s short hair and Chuck’s got one hand on his dick, working it a lot better than Mike’s ever figured out how to, his fist amazingly soft and slick with spit and Mike’s own eager precome and the other hand clamped tightly around the nape of Mike’s neck in just the right way that feels best, that feels _safe_.

He’s breathing hard, too, voice gone low and rough, right in Mike’s ear, saying “ _I’m here, I’m here and I’ve got you, Mike, god, look at you, you’re so gorgeous, you’re so_ good _—”_

Mike shudders, sobs helplessly, comes all over Chuck’s shirt.

Chuck strokes him through it, coaxing out a series of aftershocks that just about rip Mike apart, leave him hollow and shivering, hot tears sliding down his cheeks. It feels kind of like the blank, overwhelmed emptiness that happens after a guy gets the absolute crap knocked out of him, but _good_. And Chuck is there, is still there, is still holding him.

Mike finally sits back and wipes his face, totally unsure whether he should be happy or embarrassed or both or what.

“You okay?” Chuck asks.

“Yeah. I. Um. Yeah. Man, Chuck, where’d you _learn_ this?”

“Uh, dude, it was just a basic handjob,” Chuck says, sounding defensive, and okay, if that was what _basic_ sexual operations feels like Mike isn’t sure how anyone survives the advanced stuff.

“No, I mean— I— when— when did you—” he bites his lip when Chuck gets a weird frown, like he’s hurt or insulted or something. 

“Mike, I’m nineteen, of course I’ve had sex before,” Chuck says, like that’s somehow a totally normal thing Mike should just have assumed about him and _wow, okay_ , Chuck’s had sex before, _wow_.

“With _WHO_?” Mike wants to know, and he definitely asks it in a cool, collected kind of way.  His voice totally does _not_ go embarrassingly strangled and crack in the middle of the word. “ _Claire!?_ ”

Chuck bursts out laughing. “Oh my god, no, I mean— yeah, wow, I’d love to, but she’s— um, no, I don’t think— I don’t think I was _ever_ going to get that to actually happen.”

“Then, uh...” Mike tries to think. It can’t have been any of the other Burners, it _can’t_. He’d _know_. Wouldn’t he?

Chuck pats the bare skin of his hip. “Dude, I’m not gonna sit here and go over the whole list with you, okay?  That’s kind of ridiculous and also like, none of your business?”

“ _List_ ,” Mike repeats.  The word doesn’t make any more sense when he says it.

“Yeah, I have a life y’know, it’s not all getting kidnapped and junk. Though, I mean. Some of the office ladies were pretty cute.” Chuck gives him a crooked, conspiratorial smile. “Some of the Security guys, too.”

Mike feels like half his life just got rearranged.

Chuck goes on, “I mean, it’s probably not like, as much sex as _you’ve_ had—”

“I haven’t.”

“—but it’s— wait. What?”

“I haven’t,” Mike repeats. “I mean, I didn’t even know you’d, uh, had. Any. I haven’t. I haven’t had any before.”

Chuck stares at him, apparently totally amazed by something Mike didn’t even know he didn’t know. “Holy crap, dude, but you’re—you’re _so hot_ though. How am _I_ your _first_?”

“I like you,” Mike says, hoping this is the right answer. “I always liked you.”

“ _Oh my god, Mikey,”_ Chuck breathes, and hauls him in by the back of his neck to kiss him senseless again.

That last for a couple of minutes before Mike remembers that he needs air and pulls back to actually gulp in a breath instead of stolen gasps between needy kisses.  Chuck is still holding onto his hips, and there’s an obvious bulge in the front of his jeans and Mike is floating about a thousand miles above the earth right now, holy crap.  This can’t really be happening.

“So…”  Mike blinks a couple of times, trying to clear his head—Chuck matter-of-factly talking about his _list_ of people he’s done sex with is enough to wake Mike up a lot, but his whole body still feels kind of shaky and weak.  And okay, he might not have any experience, but it seems pretty straightforward to assume that if he’s going to get off ( _mind-blowingly_ , jeez) Chuck should also get off.  

“So.   _Mm…_ ” It’s way too tempting to just keep kissing like this, but he has to focus.  He pushes Chuck back firmly by the shoulders.  “What should I…?”

“Oh.”  Chuck gives him this weird kind of look, like Mike is something he’s analyzing, like he can see little readouts off of Mike like he gets from the equipment he puts in their cars.  Mike barely resists the sudden urge to straighten up and sit at attention.  “Uh...if you’ve never done this--I mean, you don’t have to.  I can just…” he starts to reach down to his own jeans, and Mike might be kind of dizzy still but that is _not_ going to fly.

“No!  Dude, no, come on,”  and Chuck still doesn’t look sure, so Mike grabs his hand and pulls it gently away.  “I want to,” he says, and feels Chuck’s whole body tense in a jerky little twitch as Mike’s hand touches his thigh.  “I really wanna get my hands on you, dude, I just...y’know.  Gotta figure out how.”

“You don’t have to ‘figure out’ anything,” Chuck says, and he looks sort of vaguely alarmed by the way Mike is sizing him up but he’s also pink in the face again.  “I’ll—haha, how did I end up saying this, what’s my life—I’ll show you.  How to, uh... touch.  Me.”  

That sounds like literally the best idea anybody has ever had.  Mike kisses him again and then, because it seems like a good idea, kisses his cheeks and his jaw and nuzzles into his neck.  Chuck squeaks and slaps at him, half-laughing.  “Dude!  Stop— _pfff_ , stop tickling—quit it!  Look, do you wanna do this or not?”

“Yeah!”  How is that even something he’s asking?  Mike obviously hasn’t made it clear enough how _totally into this_ he is.  Well, that’s gonna be pretty easy to fix.  He’s totally gonna do this, it’ll be awesome, and then maybe later some time they can do all of this _again_ and this time they won’t be crammed into Mutt’s seat and Mike can learn some new moves.

...Once he gets this stupid button undone.  Why is this so much harder on somebody else’s jeans? Mike’s never had any problems with his own.

“Need some help with that?”  Chuck is trying not to laugh, Mike can hear it in his voice.  He pokes Chuck in the side vengefully, and Chuck jumps and squawks again.  “Dude!  Tickling’s not sexy!”

“Everything you do is sexy,” says Mike, and just like he kind of hoped, that makes Chuck sputter and stammer, derailed.  Encouraged—at least talking sexy doesn’t seem too hard, he just has to be honest—Mike gives one last stubborn tug at the button of Chuck’s jeans and grins as it finally pops loose.  He has to lift himself awkwardly up to shove Chuck’s jeans down, and they kind of end up tangled around Chuck’s knees, but that’s okay.    

Okay.  Now.  Game plan.

“Mikey,” says Chuck overhead, a little bit squeaky with embarrassment, and Mike glances up as big, pale hands tug at his shoulders. “...Stop staring at my dick, dude, it’s weird.”

“I’m just figuring out...uh...stuff. Strategy.” He was staring a little bit, yeah, but that’s because it’s _Chuck’s dick_ , it’s big and it’s there and it’s the same dark pink Chuck’s face goes sometimes which Mike is never not going to think about and Mike is totally about to touch it.

“And Texas calls _me_ a nerd,” Chuck sighs.  “Don’t think about it too hard.  Thinking about stuff too hard is _my_ job, remember?”  His hand finds Mike’s, guides it down between them and even though he’s the one that put Mike’s hand on his dick he still gasps when Mike takes hold of it. It’s really warm, and already a little wet up at the head. Chuck’s head drops back against the seat for a second and he closes his eyes and swallows really hard.  When his voice comes back it’s hoarser and lower again, like it was when he was talking in Mike’s ear.  “...S-so...you’ve never done this before but you’ve... _mm._  You _have_ touched _yourself_ before, right, that’s not—”

“Yeah! I mean. Yes. Totally.” And this shouldn’t be that different, except that he’s doing it in reverse and from the front and he can’t feel what he’s doing.  But yeah, he’s Mike Chilton and he can totally do this.  Mike pulls his hand away just long enough to lick his palm—tastes weird, but not gross, just weird—and then starts to really move his hand, trying to find a rhythm, feeling out how hard he should squeeze and how quickly Chuck moves with him.  

He admits, “I thought about you.”

Whatever rhythm he’d managed to find goes out the window as Chuck does a kind of full-body stutter, shocked.  

“Whuh,” he says, like this is _surprising_ somehow.  “You mean when— _oh._ ”  And his hips jerk up off the seat for a second at the thought, the hand he used to guide MIke’s hand down to his dick goes from hovering and uncertain to vice-like around Mike’s wrist.  “ _Oh,_ geez, _wow._ ”

“Is that... okay?” Mike doesn’t mean to sound quite so uncertain, but he just... he just wants to double-check, to make _sure._

Chuck blinks and gives him a look Mike can’t interpret, like he’s trying to figure something out.  “...Yeah,” he says, sliding his hand through Mike’s hair.  “Yeah, dude, that’s crazy hot. Come here.”

It’s not a request. The authority in his voice sends a hot, delighted kind of shiver down Mike’s spine and he jumps to follow orders, to lean in as Chuck pulls on his hair and give him his mouth. While Chuck does some really awesome stuff with his tongue Mike tries to focus on keeping his hand moving, on not squeezing too hard, on sliding his other hand up the front of Chuck’s shirt.  He might not be as good with his hands as Chuck is, but coordination, multi-tasking, those he can do.  He’s going to be _good_ at this. He _has_ to.

“Good, that’s good,” Chuck says when they pull apart to breathe, and it makes Mike shiver with a dizzying mix of relief and pride. “You want my shirt off?”

Holy crap, _yes._ “Please,” says Mike fervently.

“You sound _really_ nice asking me for stuff,” says Chuck, kind of half to himself, and then before Mike can respond to that, “Okay.  But make it fast.”

It’s tricky getting his shirt off with one hand, but on the upside it gives Mike the opportunity to feel up the increasingly exposed skin of Chuck’s back and chest, the fading brown freckles and old pale scars, how amazingly soft his skin is over his bones. Mike stops for a second when he’s got the hem up above Chuck’s collarbones to try putting his mouth on them, and it doesn’t make him go crazy or anything but it does make Chuck groan quietly in his chest and pull on Mike’s hair. Not guiding him anywhere, just possessive.   

“Nice,” he gasps. “That’s— _ahh, that’s good, yeah—_ come on, get my shirt off already— _”_

“Sorry!” Mike snaps guiltily back to his assigned work. Fast, Chuck told him to do it fast, he shouldn’t have gotten distracted. He strips the shirt off in half a second, so it rumples his short hair and leaves Chuck blinking, then sits there holding it, at a loss again.  Chuck’s arm is still bandaged, a stark reminder of how recently—no.  Not thinking about that, not now.  There’s still blood on the bandage, but it all looks old and when Chuck reaches out and takes his shirt gently out of Mike’s hands, he does it without wincing.  So.  So that’s good.  Even if he’s probably taking it back so he can put it back on and climb out of Mutt and never touch Mike again.

“Sorry,” Mike repeats, late and awkward again. He’s doesn’t know what he’s doing, and he’s always been able to at least _improvise_ before but he can’t now when it _really matters_ and Chuck’s going to get exasperated with how he can’t do this, like, any minute now, and leave.

“Hey,” Chuck says, smiling. He cups the back of Mike’s head. “Hey, okay, Mike, it’s fine. You’re doing fine. It might be news to you, but it’s alright not to be super completely perfect all the time at everything, man.”

 _But you deserve that_ , Mike thinks. _You deserve better_. _The best_. He’s not sure how well saying that is going to go over, but Chuck apparently kind of reads some of it off his face anyway.

“Okay, look,” he says, and touches himself, and, wow, okay, Mike is _looking_. Chuck pumps himself in a steady rhythm, eyes shut, runs his thumb over the head of his dick, smearing precome, and strokes again until he’s breathing hard. Mike’s not breathing very steadily right now, either.

“Now you do it,” Chuck tells him, letting go of himself and taking hold of Mike’s hips instead. Mike shivers all over at the touch, at the command, and goes for it. He thinks of Chuck in his cell in front of his subjects, commanding even through an iron door, Chuck pressing him against a wall with a hand in his hair—no, not here, not now, he’s not remembering that.  This isn’t like that, this is—this is... Chuck on the battlefield, confident, in control. Proud. Fearless. That feels right, that feels _good,_ makes Mike ache with eagerness to get this right, to be worth it for him. His best friend says _faster_ and _like that_ and _get it wetter_ and when he says _yeah, yes, good, you’re being so good for me_ Mike accidentally makes a stupid, hungry noise, almost a whine. Chuck laughs at him breathlessly and grabs a big handful of his hair, pulling so it stings in a way that burns right down into his guts.

“ _More_ , c’mon,” he gasps, shuddering under Mike’s hands. “You can— aah, you—oh, god, _more, MIKE—”_ and there’s the screaming Mike kept expecting but it’s unafraid, unashamed, he’s _enjoying_ himself. He’s rocking up underneath Mike, their thighs sliding together, then sinks his teeth in the meat of Mike’s shoulder as he spills wet and hot and messy and gorgeous into Mike’s grip.

Mike tries to catch his breath. He’s hard again, prickling all over with adrenaline and renewed desire, his hand dripping with Chuck’s come and the smell of what they’ve been doing all around them and Chuck’s _teeth_ in his shoulder and it _hurts_ and that’s _great_.

Chuck stops biting him enough to mumble something vague and bleary and Mike just about makes out the words _so, so good, Mikey_ , which fills him with ferocious pride.

“You okay?” he asks, just to make sure.

“Haha, oh my god,” Chuck says, and shudders again. “ _Yeah_. But you, mmm. Y’c’n leggo now.”

Mike lets go. It probably shouldn’t be possible to blush when he’s already this flushed all over, but he can feel his face trying anyway. He starts to reach out, realizes his hand is still a mess, tries to wipe it on his shirt and realizes he’s not wearing one.  Well, while he’s trying all this new stuff…

Chuck makes a kind of croaky little noise and shudders again when Mike licks his fingers off, and then follows it up almost immediately with a hiccuping kind of giddy little laugh when Mike grimaces a little.  “Don’t have to,” he says, but his eyes still drift down and fix on Mike’s mouth when Mike licks his fingers again.  “...jeez, dude.”

“...Hm,” says Mike, and makes another face just to see Chuck laugh again.  “Kinda... mm.”

“Yeah, takes some getting used to,” Chuck says, yawning, and Mike has to stop and stare again, even after everything, at the casual certainty in the way he says that.  “Wow, I totally didn’t mean to bite you that hard, sorry—”

“No!” says Mike, fast and too loud.  Chuck jumps, and Mike forces his voice lower.  “No, bro, no, that was—totally okay, that was great.”

“Oh!”  Chuck blinks, and then reaches out and traces his nails past the place he bit.  A hot, sweet little sting sends shivers down Mike’s back.  “You sure?  I mean, that was pretty rough—”

“Rough is good,” says Mike hoarsely.  “Really good.  Rough is great. Can I... uh— can I take care of this?” He reaches down and tentatively takes hold of his own dick and _wow_ that feels really, really good. He won’t if sex is supposed to be over now or something, but he really hopes he can. Chuck just grins at him sleepily.

“Yeah, man, go for it. I mean, ‘nless you— y’want me to...?” He reaches out and Mike shakes his head hastily. If Chuck does him again and then he does _Chuck_ again the sex will never be over and they’ll never get out of here and he’s actually starting to get really hungry.

“No, I got it,” he says. “I can— uh, fast, I can just, nnh, take care o-of— it. Finish.”

“Sure, okay. But lean back. Further. Yeah— there. Lemme see you.”

Mike trembles all over as he obeys. Even just touching himself feels different like this, more real, more important, with Chuck _looking_ at him, smiling and intent, like he’s doing it right. Like he’s the best.

“So what’d you think about?” Chuck asks, and Mike twitches all over with surprise.

“Um!?” he goes.

“When you were, uh... Haha, um, thinking about... me. Was it like this?”

“Uh— _haa, ahh, n-no_.” Mike swallows hard. “No. You were— you’d be— nnh, I don’t know— nervous?”

“Yeah, that’s fair,” Chuck grins. “I could pretend, if you wanted?”

“What?” Mike blinks at him, confused. Chuck tilts his head to one side, eyes distant, then pulls his shoulders in, bites his lip, and ducks his face away.

“Like— I— I haven’t ever done this before, Mikey,” he says, his voice tight with nerves. “A-are you sure we should?” His big hands flutter in the space between them, like he’s scared to touch Mike, like _he’s_ the one who doesn’t know what to do. A lie, a trick, just what Mike wanted but not _real—_ Mike’s pressed himself hard into the corner between the dashboard and the door, heart hammering.

“No,” he says tightly. “ _Stop_.”

Chuck stops, maybe. He sits up straight again, at least.  

“Sorry,” he says. “It’s just playing, man.”

Mike shakes his head. “I want this to be real,” he says, and is horrified to find his eyes are burning again. “Is this... I mean, has any of this...? _Some_ of this has been real, right?”

“Aw, jeez,” Chuck says, startled and worried, like’s he never even stopped to think that maybe Mike was still messed up about this part of— everything.  He reaches out, slow and really gentle, and it feels right this time, it feels like Chuck again, but... “Dude, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to freak you out. This is all real, Mike, I wanna be here--doing this, I mean, y’know.  With you. I’m not going anywhere, okay? Trust me.”

“Okay,” Mike says. His voice cracks in the middle. “I— I’m just. I’m sorry, I’m just tired of being so...”

“...Scared?” Chuck gives him a wry, crooked smile, and Mike has to laugh at it, at the absurdity.

“Yeah,” he says, and sniffs hard. “Yeah, okay, scared, you got me.”

“I got you. Come here, you big chicken.”

Chuck pulls him in and wraps his arms around him, a tight familiar hug except they’re both still naked. As soon as Mike isn’t having yet another big stupid emotional crisis his dick’s kind of interested in the whole _Chuck is naked and he’s naked and they’re both naked, wow,_ situation again. He tries to adjust himself without it being a big deal and Chuck huffs a quiet little laugh into his hair.

“You wanna finish that up?” Chuck asks him, and moves one of his thighs so it slides up the inside of Mike’s. His skin is so _stupidly_ soft.  His eyes are dark and half-closed and his face is blotchy and flushed and his lower lip looks like he’s been chewing on it and Mike really does.  Mike _definitely_ wants.

But…

“Could…” he kind of nods awkwardly, not sure how to say what he wants—not even kind of really sure what he wants at all.  “Could you…?”

And Chuck seems to know what he means, even though Mike’s not even sure what he means, because he laughs and goes “Yeah, okay.”  Reaches out and puts his hands on Mike’s thighs, spreading him open a little bit more, looking him up and down like he wants to take a picture and keep it forever.  When he clears his throat to keep talking, his voice comes out commanding.  “Touch yourself for me. I want to watch.”

Orders, clear and simple and solid.  _That’s_ something Mike can do. He breathes more deeply in relief and leans back, letting Chuck see him. He still feels kind of shy but it’s what he’s been told to do, so. There’s a reason for it. He licks his hand a few times and gets to work. Chuck stays with him, running his big hands over his thighs, telling him _slow down_ or _get that wetter_ or _you look so hot, dude, oh my god_ or _lean back_ or _let me hear you_. It kind of gets to him, every time he does what he’s told and it makes Chuck happy with him. It’s good. He’s good.

He’s gotten loud and kind of messy, his cheek pressed into Chuck’s palm, his hips working up against his own hands, his dick dripping from how long he’s been at this, how many times he’s been told _slow down_ or _just play with the tip for a while_ or whatever. He’s whining with every breath. If he could just— go faster, finish up, that’d be so great, he _really_ wants to, but he’s gotta— he’s gotta do as he’s told, and he’s so close _anyway_ , it’s gonna be soon, he’s _sure_.

“Okay, stop,” Chuck says abruptly, and Mike freezes, shuddering all over with the effort. He’s so close, how did he mess it up?

“What?” he gasps.

“I like it when you listen to me,” Chuck says. “You’re good, Mikey, you’re doing great. I just wanted to see if you’d stop and you did.”

Mike shudders again, swallows hard. Good, he’s still good. “I— I listen— to you all the, nnh, all the time.”

“Liar,” Chuck grins.

“I _do_ ,” Mike says, because this is important. “I trust you, I— I listen, Chuck, _please_ , can I—just—”

“Shh. Hands at your sides.”

Mike does as he’s told, panting through his teeth with frustration. But he’s gonna keep being good. He can do this. Chuck won’t have any reason to be mad at him. And Chuck just _looks_ at him, smiling, petting Mike’s leg with one hand in a way that makes him work really hard not to squirm or cry. His dick _aches_.

“How long do you think you could stay like this?” Chuck asks. “Like, edging.”

Mike has no idea. “As... as long as you... want?” he hazards.

“Hmm. Nice.” Chuck keeps petting him, drawing little circles and lines into the twitching muscles of his leg, _binary_ , something Mike can’t read but just knowing Chuck’s writing it is electrifying, sweet and hot and ticklish up along the tender skin of his stomach. He pinches one of Mike’s nipples and the bright sweet sting of it makes Mike have to squeeze his eyes shut, panting raggedly. He wants to finish up, he wants to so badly but he was _told_ not to, he has his orders and Chuck likes him like this, he can _do it_. The only sound in the car right now is the soft slide of Chuck’s amazing hands all over him, playing with all the same spots he learned earlier _except his dick_ , driving him absolutely crazy, and his helpless, hungry whining. Chuck told him to _shh_ so he can’t talk but he can’t possibly be any quieter, he _can’t,_ this is as good as he can manage and it’s just got to be enough, he can’t— he can’t handle it— but he’s gotta. So he will.

“So you _do_ wanna come, right?” Chuck finally says. His voice is so gorgeous like this, low and fond. Fond of Mike.

“ _Yes,”_ Mike chokes out, _“oh god yes please, Chuck, man, yeah, PLEASE.”_

“Yeah, okay. You’ve been good for me for long enough, Mikey. Go for it.”

Mike grabs his dick at basically lightspeed and pumps it once, twice, and comes like he’s getting his brains turned inside out. He curls forward into Chuck’s arms and feels a wordless, desperate noise tear out of him as he shudders and shakes apart with his best friend petting his hair.  

After that, his brain stops working for a while.  Mike considers trying to push himself up, clean himself off, lift his sticky face out of Chuck’s shoulder—considering is as far as it goes.  Wow, he feels so tired and heavy all over, like he could actually go to sleep right now, right here.  Everything feels soft and good.

“That was fun,” Chuck says finally. He’s kind of got a halfie going on but when Mike blearily tries to grab it Chuck moves his hand away. “Nah, I’m fine, man. Relax.”

Mike relaxes. His best friend is holding him and is warm and smells good even with all the sweat and other stuff they’re covered in and there’s awesome fingers running through his hair and he’s good. Everything’s good. He kind of drifts while Chuck cleans stuff up with a rag or a sock or something, then bosses him into putting his pants back on. He wakes most of the way up when he’s buckled into the soft, five-point restraints of Mutt’s passenger side, and sees Chuck leaned over from the driver’s seat.

“D’luxe...?” he mumbles, flailing a little. “No... hey...”

“Shh, Mikey. It’s cool.” Chuck shows him a navigation screen, the route to Antonio’s a bright green line. “We’re gonna meet up with the others. Go back to sleep.”

Mike peers at the map, then closes his eyes when it’s too much effort to try and read anything. “Mm. ‘K.”

A soft huff of laughter, then warm, moving darkness.

 

*

 

Mike wakes up properly in Antonio’s front parking lot, with the feeling that they’ve maybe been there awhile.

“Hey, bro,” Chuck says. “You up?” He’s playing some kind of word game with Julie’s avatar. Or maybe they’re programming something? Mike never understands what Chuck and Julie do together at the best of times, and right now he feels like he’s doing good just understanding short words.

“Mnngfghl,” Mike says. “Yeah. Um.” He’s hungry. He’s _really_ hungry. “...Food.”

“No shoes, no shirt, pal,” Chuck says, and hands him his t-shirt. He feels more awake by the time he’s gotten his boots on, and when he gets out of the car—fumbling a little over having to get out the unfamiliar right-hand passenger’s door—he feels actually really great. Chuck comes around and gives him the keys and the head of his spark staff, and he takes Chuck by the shoulders and kisses him, just like, because. And Chuck lets him.

“Jeez,” he says, pink and grinning, afterwards. “Well, okay.”

“Okay?” Mike asks.

“Yeah.” Chuck leans in and kisses him again. “Yeah, this is— this is— _Mike, god—”_

They make out in the parking lot for kind of awhile, until Mike’s stomach reminds him that if he pulls Chuck back into Mutt for another round of _sex they totally had sex wow and Chuck’s probably down to have even_ more _sex_ — anyway, he’s so hungry he will probably die if he tries it.

“Um,” he says, pulling back. “Later? Can we—?”

“Dude, we _better_ ,” Chuck says emphatically. So that’s great.

It’s less great the way Chuck hesitates on the threshold to Antonio’s, flinching all over, then very obviously _forces_ himself to walk in after Mike with his shoulders drawn tight, hands in his pockets. There’s a long, awful minute where he looks around at the place the same way a lot of refugees from Deluxe look at the place, when the Burners drop them off at the Strip to get oriented: suspicious, shell-shocked. Wondering whether or not they did the right thing, after all. Mike sees the place the way a kid fresh from Deluxe might, maybe the way he did once, the dirt, the disorder, the weird decorations and weird smells and weirder people, the overwhelming rush of a real Motorcity joint, fast food, fast music, too much to handle in every direction.

Mike touches Chuck’s arm, wondering if everything’s going to be like this with him now, and for how long. But Chuck leans into him, shrugs his arm up over his shoulders, and gives him a smile. Crooked, and a little bitter, but... Mike doesn’t know, Chuck looks happy anyway, maybe. He hopes.

“I’m going to eat _everything_ in here,” Chuck says. “Oh my god, it’s been so long. Where’s our booth?”

When the Burners see them together, Julie whistles and Dutch waves. Texas hoards his pizza in closer to his chest and starts eating faster. Chuck folds himself into the booth almost like he hadn’t forgotten where it was, and their friends make room for him while pretending pretty well they aren’t still waiting for Chuck to go nuts and start trying to maul people again. Mike thinks— he hopes— that they can patch all the cracks left between them. Scrub off the rust. It’s not Motorcity without some dents and dings, right? You can’t live free without getting lost sometimes, you can’t live fast without crashing every now and then. But if you get lost, your friends find you. If you’re hurt, your friends put you back together. Or they try. And that’s good enough. That’s gotta be good enough.

Chuck looks at him sidelong, smiling, his mouth shiny with pizza grease and dark with kissing, and he squeezes Mike’s hand under the table.

Yeah, Mike figures that’s pretty great.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading, everyone! and thanks for all your awesome comments. also big extra thanks to my super cool and great at writing AND drawing co-writer/illustrator birchbow, without whom i couldn't possibly have ever actually finished a multichapter fic, much less one this good.  
> —roach
> 
> *  
>  _And this is the best thing that could have happened,_  
>  _Any longer and I wouldn't have made it_  
>  _It's not a war, no, it's not a rapture_  
>  _I'm just a person, but you can't take it_
> 
>  
> 
>  _The same tricks that, that once fooled me_  
>  _They won't get you anywhere_  
>  _I'm not the same kid from your memory_  
>  _Well, now I can fend for myself_  
>  —Paramore, _Ignorance_


End file.
